The Ridgeline Trail Grew for the First Time Since 2014, and Half of Willamette Street Still Doesn't Know

If you've parked in the gravel lot on South Willamette Street near 52nd Avenue anytime in the past decade to walk Blanton Ridge, you know the routine. Cross through the yellow gate, follow the 1.8 miles of oak woodland and Douglas fir to Blanton Road, turn around, drive home. That lot has been the whole menu for longer than most Southwest Eugene residents have lived here.

This summer, for the first time since the Dillard Connector Trail opened in 2014, there's a new gravel lot and trailhead directly across the street. It leads to South Eugene Meadows, a 194-acre stretch of prairie, oak savanna and fir forest that the city bought in 2012 and mostly left alone until construction crews finally broke ground in August 2025. The trail opened to the public in July, after fourteen years of sitting mostly undeveloped.

Fourteen Years Between the Deed and the Dirt

The land itself is not new. The city's own project page traces the purchase back to 2012, funded through a mix of the 2006 parks bond, an Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board grant, the Bonneville Power Administration's Willamette Wildlife Mitigation Program, and a donation from the previous landowner. For most of that stretch, the only way in was an informal footpath from a small, unmarked access point off Blanton Road. No trailhead, no parking, no official blessing to be there.

Construction on an actual built trail didn't start until August 2025, and it stopped for the winter rains at roughly 60 percent complete, according to the Eugene Parks Foundation, the nonprofit that helped fund the work. Crews picked back up in spring and finished this July. The math on that timeline is the real story: fourteen years from purchase to public trail, and the last new mileage on the entire Ridgeline system before this was over a decade ago.

What You're Actually Walking Into Right Now

The new trail is 2.5 miles that form a 3.8-mile "lollipop loop" starting from the new Willamette Street trailhead, according to the city's July announcement. It connects northeast to Blanton Road and Blanton Ridge Park, meaning the two trail systems now share a boundary even though they've operated as separate destinations for years.

The two loops aren't interchangeable, though, and knowing the difference matters if you're deciding which one to walk on a random Tuesday evening:

Blanton Ridge has always been foot traffic only. South Eugene Meadows was built as shared use, so it's the first place in this immediate stretch of the Ridgeline system where you can actually ride a bike between the two ends of the loop rather than just pedaling the paved connector roads to get there.

Open Doesn't Mean Finished

Here's the part that matters if you're planning to go this month instead of reading about it after the fact. When the city announced the trail was open, it also said the new parking lot on Willamette Street was still coming, expected sometime "in the coming weeks." As of mid-July, according to KLCC's reporting, there was no signage and no portable restrooms at the new access point. The city's own parks planning spokesperson, Ryan Turner, put it plainly:

"All of the finishing touches like wayfinding signage and things like that aren't up yet, but we wanted to get the trail usable by the public as soon as we could."

Turner also told KLCC he expected the official grand opening celebration sometime in "late summer or early fall," which puts the likely ribbon-cutting right around now. Whether that ceremony has happened by the time you read this or not, the practical status the city described in late July is worth planning around if you haven't been out there yet: no restrooms, no finished wayfinding signage, and a parking lot the city called still "coming." That's not a complaint about the project. It's the kind of detail a trail app listing mileage and elevation gain won't tell you.

A few things worth knowing before you drive out there:

• As of the city's July update, there was no restroom at the new lot. Even if that's changed since, it's safer to plan as if it hasn't.
• Wayfinding signage wasn't up as of mid-July either. If you're not already familiar with the Willamette and 52nd intersection, look for the new gravel lot directly across the street from the older Ridgeline Trail lot, not somewhere farther down the road.
• The loop is shared use, so if you're walking with a dog off in your own head space, listen for bikes on the meadow sections.
• The Eugene Parks Foundation raised $665,000 toward the $1.5 million project, with the rest coming from System Development Charges. Ongoing maintenance is funded through the 2023 Parks and Recreation Levy, which is worth knowing if you ever wonder why some Eugene trails get mowed and cleared more often than others.

The Loop You Can Now String Together Without Moving Your Car

The genuinely useful part of this whole update is what it does to a familiar trip. Before this summer, a visit to the Willamette and 52nd trailhead meant one route: Blanton Ridge out and back, 3.6 miles round trip, done in under two hours. Now the same parking area gives you access to both trail systems from opposite sides of the street. Walk Blanton Ridge north toward Blanton Road, backtrack, cross Willamette, and pick up the South Eugene Meadows loop heading south and west through the prairie and oak savanna. You can turn one short evening walk into a longer outing without ever moving the car, something that wasn't physically possible from this spot a year ago.

The city's facilities page for South Eugene Meadows also notes the property is meant to eventually help connect this trailhead all the way out to Wild Iris Ridge on the west side of Eugene. That connection isn't built yet, and there's no timeline attached to it. But it's a reminder that this summer's opening is a piece of something larger the city has been assembling in slow motion since before most current Southwest Eugene homeowners bought their houses.

A Fourteen-Year Project Doesn't Announce Itself

None of this landed with much noise. There was no ribbon across the trailhead in July, no press conference at the meadow's edge, just a city newsletter update and a handful of local outlets picking it up. That's how a fourteen-year project tends to finish: quietly, in pieces, well after most of the people who'll actually use it have stopped thinking about whether it would ever happen.

If you already know this stretch of Willamette Street, you now have twice the trail you had last year from the exact same parking spot. If you don't, the next time you're driving south past 52nd Avenue, look for the second gravel lot. It's easy to miss. That's kind of the point of this whole story.

If you're already walking this trail system or you're just the person your friends ask what it's actually like to live near it day to day, that's a conversation we're always glad to have. Parker Heights Realty knows this stretch of Willamette Street and the rest of Southwest Eugene block by block. Reach out anytime to schedule a free consultation and home valuation, no trail map required.