Council gives green light to ‘Vegas Valley Rim Trail’

By Dave Toplikar

Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012 | 11:40 a.m.

A system of 113 miles of trails that will rim the Las Vegas Valley was given a go-ahead today by the Las Vegas City Council.

“It's a pretty exciting project," Mayor Pro Tem Stavros Anthony said shortly before the council unanimously endorsed a resolution supporting the Vegas Valley Rim Trail, a regional trail system.

The trail system also will connect into the "Neon to Nature" trail system, which links the valley's urban core with more than 7 million acres of public land.

The complete Vegas Valley Rim Trail system will include land in Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City and parts of Clark County.

It links up urban areas to natural features, including the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and the Desert National Wildlife Refuge.

"It offers recreational activities to Las Vegas residents and visitors," Anthony told the council before the vote.

The council heard a short presentation from Tom Perrigo, sustainability officer for the city's department of administrative services, and Mauricia Baca, the executive director of the Outside Las Vegas Foundation.

Baca said the project has been in the works for many years and that Perigo is involved with it as part of the Las Vegas open space plan.

That Northwest Open Space Plan, which was adopted by the city council in 2005, recommended a concept called "Vias Verdes Las Vegas," which was a corridor of publicly owned lands surrounding the valley.

Other governmental groups involved in defining the trail corridor have been the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition and the Clark County Commission.

Last August, the city established an interlocal agreement with Outside Las Vegas Foundation to increase the quality of the city's part of the trail system.

At that time, the city agreed to provide the Outside Las Vegas Foundation with $55,000 to develop a volunteer effort to create an "adopt-a-trail program."

The Outside Las Vegas Foundation announced the name of the Vegas Valley Rim Trail last October at the Henderson Pavilion.

"It's a fabulous way to highlight the special elements of the Las Vegas Valley," Baca told the city council.

She said other governmental organizations, including the Clark County Commission, have also approved similar resolutions.

"This is the organization that counts," said Ward 6 Councilman Steve Ross. "This is really exciting for the future of the valley as a whole."

Ward 5 Councilman Bob Coffin said the city still does not have a detailed map available of the trail system, which, he said, is "gonna be a big thing for us."

Coffin joked that council members would probably be asked to hike all the trails, which he said would take several days.

Baca said there is information about the trails system on her organization's website and on the city's website, but that a stand-alone trails website will eventually be built to provide information about the Vegas Valley Rim Trail.

"Each of us council members is proud of what we've done to push it forward," said Ward 1 Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian.