Missoula County Awards $7,500 In Grants For Parks and Trails

The Missoula County Parks and Trails Advisory Board and the Board of County Commissioners have awarded $7,500 in matching grants to support two projects in Missoula and in Condon.

Parks and Trails Coordinator John Stegmeier said the monies will go to help build a bike skills facility and an interpretive trail.

"The bike skills facility will be located in the Upper Rattlesnake area, and planning and public comment have already begun there," Stegmeier said. "It will be a fairly substantial facility in Syringa Park, which is located off lower Lincoln Hills Drive. The matching funds will help in the design of that park."

The second project is located in Condon.

"This project will be an interpretive trail on the Swan valley Elementary School property," he said. "This project is part of a larger community forest plan that the kids in the school have been working on for some time, and they wanted to create a recreational public use component to the project, so they're doing roughly one mile of interpretive trail that will have multiple recreational benefits for hiking, biking and cross country skiing."

The county has allocated $5,000 for the Syringa Park project in Missoula and $2,500 for the interpretive rail in Condon.