COOKSBURG, Pa. — Commonwealth Court could decide soon whether the yellow blazes that mark the 132-mile Baker Trail will be repainted along a half-mile stretch of the Clarion River where several property owners have blocked its historical route.
The Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, caretaker of the 68-year-old trail in Clarion County, filed a lawsuit Feb. 15 in an attempt to end the decade-long dispute that has caused some seasonal cabin and home owners to post no trespassing signs and aggressively confront trail hikers who ignore them.
The dispute has caused the rerouting of the Baker Trail around the eight privately owned riverside properties and two tracts owned by the 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 in Clarion County.
Since 2011, according to the lawsuit, 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.”
“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,” said Bob Mulshine, president of the Rachel Carson Trail Conservancy, which assumed stewardship of the Baker Trail in 2004.
The legal term for that alleged right of access is “prescriptive easement.” According to the lawsuit, which cites a supporting 1961 Pennsylvania 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.
The trail follows forest paths, old jeep trails and dirt roads through woods, farmlands, along rivers and creeks, through both public parks and forests and private property.
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.
David Miller, a property owner on River Lane and a defendant in the lawsuit, said in a phone conversation last week that he is opposed to the trail crossing his land and that a majority of the property owners on River Lane feel the same way.
“It’s a matter of private property,” he said before declining further comment.
Roger Mazzarella, who owns property a quarter-mile from River Lane and has regularly hiked the Baker Trail there since the mid-1960s, said he has had a couple “not pleasant” encounters with the private property owners in recent years. His affidavit, included in the lawsuit filing, states he has never seen hikers stray off the on-road trail or cause any damage or vandalism.
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 … .”
Jessica Stewart, assistant manager at Cook Forest and Clear Creek state parks, said park managers are well aware of the landowners dispute, including adverse interactions with hikers, but the DCNR is “trying to remain neutral until everything is settled by the court.”
That position is articulated in a Nov. 9, 2017, letter from John Norbeck, DCNR deputy secretary for parks and forestry, to Joseph Neville, executive director of the Keystone Trails Association. The Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy is a KTA member.
Mr. Norbeck wrote that DCNR does not support any trail along River Lane “that would encourage users to potentially trespass on private property.” But he goes on to state that “if a court determines that a public easement exists for trail use of River Lane, DCNR would not oppose such use on its owned and controlled lands.”
Mr. Neville refused to comment on the long-standing dispute because it is in litigation.
Mr. 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 NCT 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.
“Walking away from the river treadway would lose that right of use,” he said. “Our interest is in preserving that right.”
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983, or on Twitter @donhopey.
First Published: February 26, 2018, 10:30 a.m.