How Portland Trails Expands Equitable Access to the City’s Natural Network

Head anywhere in Portland — from the Presumpscot River Preserve to the Eastern Promenade — and you’re likely to run into a well-maintained trail. That’s all thanks to Portland Trails, a nonprofit and Onion Foundation grantee that manages around 100 miles of trails throughout the city.

The ethos of Portland Trails’ mission has remained steady since its inception in 1991: to create connections among neighbors, communities, and the natural world. While the organization has evolved over time, the spirit of its mission hasn’t wavered.

Central to the organization’s mission is an expansive understanding of accessibility. Since the ‘90s, Portland Trails has continually put resources, time, and money behind its accessibility efforts, broadening citywide access to trails for all.

Prioritizing Accessibility at Every Turn

“Portland Trails was founded for equity reasons,” says Jon Kachmar, executive director. “The Eastern Prom trail was one of our first projects. It was slated for condos, but we wanted to ensure equitable access to this special place.”

That root has blossomed over the past three decades. Today, Portland Trails advances its equity and accessibility goals throughout all of its programming, primarily through these four initiatives.

Mapping and Wayfinding

According to director of development Lindsay Conrad, “the whole point of Portland Trails is to provide access and connection — for people to the outdoors, but also with each other and to the places they want to go.”

The organization’s digital trail map is vital to this effort. The map offers details about every stretch of trail in the Portland area, including photos and information about:

• The length and conditions of the trail

• The trail’s accessibility by bus

• Activities that people commonly do on each trail

• Dog friendliness

• Bike and wheelchair accessibility

“Our trails always go from A to B for a reason,” says Kachmar. “It might be a 100-foot section between houses or the Forest City Trail that traverses 10 miles across the whole city. But it always begins in a place that has meaning and ends in a place that has meaning.”

How does the team figure out which places have meaning to the community? By simply observing. They listen to people, see where they’re already walking, and maintain the paths that help people get where they need and want to go. The digital trail map — and its paper counterpart — is an ever-evolving tool that enables these connections. “It’s an ongoing piece of art forever,” says Kachmar. “We’re never going to finish it.”

Community Engagement

To determine what the community needs from the organization, the Portland Trails team conducted a series of listening sessions, co-facilitated with other nonprofit organizations, including In Her Presence. They heard directly from both people who frequently use Portland’s trail system and those who’ve never stepped foot on one of the trails.

The listening sessions revealed common community needs, from better signage to improved wayfinding tools to accessibility solutions like benches and lighting. And since the sessions, the Portland Trails team has acted on what they heard.

The organization launched the Improved Access Trails initiative, which aims to provide trail access to people who haven’t felt comfortable on trails. “Sometimes that can be because of a physical disability,” says Conrad. “But it can also be because the person is from a different country, or they have a stroller, or they’re recovering from an injury.” Listening to these trail users has enabled the team to make strategic changes to the trails — such as using colors and symbols rather than English text to mark trails.

Portland Trails also advances its community engagement and accessibility work through:

• The Creative Paths initiative, aimed at combining artistic practice with natural observation

• Partnerships with local libraries and organizations such as Our Place, Cultivating Community, and the Portland Housing Authority

• Volunteer opportunities for maintaining and building trails

Healthier Neighborhoods for All

In 2022, Portland Trails started the Healthier Neighborhoods for All program, designed to introduce immigrants, people of color, and Indigenous individuals to the city’s trails. “We want to create a pipeline for people to start building this into their lives,” says Conrad. As such, the program offers:

• Introductory walks

• Picnics and events

• Volunteer days

• Monthly group walks

After several years of trying to get the program off the ground, the team determined they needed to dedicate additional resources toward advancing their goals. So they hired Angelique Bitshilualua as a full-time inclusion manager.

“It was really important that this person had the experience of one of the communities we were trying to reach,” says Conrad. As a graduate of In Her Presence and an avid trail user, Bitshilualua was perfect for the role — and she’s since taken the program to new heights. Healthier Neighborhoods for All has already reached more than 1,000 people in the Riverton and Sagamore Village areas.

Bitshilualua has helped the team identify and address the barriers keeping immigrant populations from using trails and, most importantly, build trust with those communities. She’s also committed to helping New Mainers realize the mental health benefits of being outdoors, which has been particularly vital for this population.

Wabanaki Partnerships

The Portland Trails team knows what they don’t know, and they actively seek out experts who do. They partnered with Passamaquoddy Language Keeper Dwayne Tomah, for example, to create and release the Fore River Sanctuary Guided Tour, which educates users about Indigenous connections to the land.

The team’s Land Justice Responsibility Statement acknowledges the limitations of white land holders and the importance of “making relationships right” with the Wabanaki peoples. That effort involves donating regularly to the Wabanaki Alliance and continuing to strengthen relationships with and learn from Indigenous communities. “We want to give them back access to the trails and to the lands around the trails,” says Kachmar. “This is a long journey with constant engagements, but if you want to focus on something, you have to dedicate resources to it.”

The Future of Portland’s Trail System

Portland Trails’ willingness to put dollars toward accessibility and equity initiatives is what makes those efforts so effective. As Kachmar says, “we need to put our money where our mouths are, and Portland Trails has been really disciplined about that.”

That discipline doesn’t show any signs of wavering. In fact, the organization is continually putting resources toward expanding the trail network and making trails more accessible, usable, and safe for more people. “In the future, we want to not only be a great connector of places in Portland, but also bring people from outside to create a regional trail network,” says Conrad.

The next time you need to get somewhere meaningful to you, look to one of the organization’s connecting trails. Portland Trails will get you where you need to go.