Conservancy Files Baker Trail Lawsuit

Scott Shindledecker

Scott Shindledecker

Published February 28, 2018 5:32 am
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COOKSBURG, Pa. (EYT) – A lawsuit could determine just where people hike the Baker Trail along a half-mile stretch of the Clarion River.

According to a published article on post-gazette.com, the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, caretaker of the 68-year-old trail in Clarion County, filed a lawsuit on February 15 in an attempt to end the decade-long dispute that has caused some seasonal cabin- and homeowners to post no trespassing signs and aggressively confront trail hikers who ignore them.

The Commonwealth Court could decide soon whether the yellow blazes that mark the 132-mile Baker Trail will be repainted along the half-mile stretch of the Clarion River where several property owners have blocked its historical route.

The Baker Trail has been rerouted around eight private riverside properties and two tracts owned by the DCNR (Department of Conservation and Natural Resources), away from the river and onto a hillside hiking path shared with the 4,600-mile North Country National Scenic Trail.

The lawsuit seeks to preserve the Baker Trail’s original route and alleges that, after years of use, the hiking public has an established right to walk across the privately owned properties on River Lane, a mostly unpaved, single lane road that runs hard against a sweeping bend of the Clarion River, just outside Cook Forest State Park.

According to the suit, the Conservancy has received emails and phone calls from trail users reporting that they were “confronted, intimidated, yelled at, or generally forced into leaving the trail along River Lane” since 2011.

Bob Mulshine, the president of the Rachel Carson Trail Conservancy,  said that “under the law, we have a right to walk that treadway that was established due to the continuous use of that trail, and we would not want that to change.”

The Conservancy assumed stewardship of the Baker Trail in 2004.

The legal term for the alleged right of access is “prescriptive easement.”

According to the lawsuit, which cites a supporting 1961 Pa. Supreme Court decision, such an easement allows public use of private property if that use is not inconsistent with the property owner’s rights, has been “open, notorious, and uninterrupted for a period of 21 years,” and benefits the community.

The Baker Trail, established in 1950 and named for Horace Forbes Baker, a coal company attorney and civic leader who died that year, starts in Freeport. It ends in the Allegheny National Forest, passing through Allegheny, Armstrong, Indiana, Jefferson, Clarion, and Forest Counties.

In the disputed area, as originally mapped and marked, hikers traveling north on the Baker Trail crossed the Clarion River on the Gravel Lick Bridge and immediately turned right onto River Lane for a half-mile of flat walking along the river before hooking onto the North Country Trail and entering Cook Forest State Park.

Now hikers cross the Clarion River and hike approximately 600 yards up narrow, curvy, and steep Gravel Lick Road before turning right at the North Country Trailhead. They follow that trail up and over the hillside behind the eight private properties, eventually rejoining the Baker Trail’s original route and crossing Henry Run.

According to the lawsuit filed by Ryan Hamilton, the attorney representing the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, the River Lane portion of the trail is important because “it provides hikers with scenic views of the Clarion River, and it makes additional portions of the trail, leading into and out of Cook Forest State Park, readily and easily accessible to the public at large.”

Ryan Borcz, the park manager at Cook Forest, said park managers are aware of the landowners’ dispute, including adverse interactions with hikers, but the DCNR is “trying to remain neutral on the issue.”

“We just ask trail users to use the higher trail where it meets the North Country Trail. Ultimately, it brings hikers to the same spot,” Borcz said.

Mulshine said that even if the conservancy wins the lawsuit and its right-of-way is legally established, the trail route Baker now shares with the North Country Trail up on the hill may not change.

“We’re not committed to moving the trail back to the treadway along the river until we have discussions with DCNR and other interested parties,” he said. “We’re not interested in shoving anything down people’s throats, but we want to preserve a legal right of access secured by more than 50 years of hikers.”

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