The Eagle Valley Trail's Final Gap Has Three Possible Routes. Its Cost Has Climbed.

As reported by The Gazette, Kevin Sharkey said, "We did save the hardest and also most expensive for last."

He was describing the stretch between Horn Ranch and Edwards. If you ride, walk, or push a stroller along this corridor, you already know the spot he means. The pavement runs smooth out of Eagle, hugs the river past Wolcott, and then simply stops, dumping you onto the shoulder of U.S. Highway 6 for the last few miles into Edwards. Cars pass close. There's no buffer. It's the one gap left in a trail system that otherwise stretches unbroken for decades.

That gap is finally getting worked on. But the route through it changed this year, and the price changed with it.

What's Actually Finished

The first piece of the final segment broke ground in July 2025 at the Mott's Landing parking area, on the east end of Horn Ranch Open Space near Red Canyon. Johnson Construction took the contract for a 1.7-mile stretch running from Mott's Landing to the CDOT maintenance yard just west of Wolcott, with a price tag of roughly $11 to $13 million and a target completion date of July 31, 2026. Much of that cost comes from retaining walls, since the trail has to squeeze through a narrow corridor between the Eagle River and the highway.

That completion date has now passed. If the schedule held, riders coming through this fall should find that piece paved rather than gapped, which would be the first time in years someone could pedal from Eagle toward Wolcott without merging onto Highway 6's shoulder for that particular mile.

The next piece is already lined up. A 2.7-mile segment from the Wolcott intersection east to a Bureau of Land Management fishing bridge carries its own estimate of $11.6 million and is slated for construction sometime in 2026, once Phase 2 clears state approval and goes out to bid.

How the Trail Route Changed

The remaining stretch into Edwards is where things got complicated, and it's worth understanding why, because it's the reason the whole project's price jumped.

For years, county planners had an informal agreement to route the trail across open space owned by Cordillera, the gated community on the hillsides above Edwards. That agreement no longer holds. Sharkey confirmed at a county work session that the understanding has been rescinded, which meant the trail team had to go back and find another way through the narrowest, most constrained part of the whole 63-mile system.

Three options remain on the table. One involves reaching an agreement with the three private owners of a ditch that runs through the corridor. Another routes the trail along Union Pacific's railroad right-of-way. The third, and by far the most expensive, would run the trail parallel to Highway 6 itself, which means building the same kind of retaining walls that made the Mott's Landing segment costly, but for a much longer stretch. County staff have also flagged a possibility that one segment could cross a proposed residential development instead of hugging the highway, though that route depends on whether that development moves forward.

None of these options are as simple, or as cheap, as the old plan. The delay does not come from a contractor running late or a budget line getting padded. The routing itself changed, and every alternative left on the table costs more than the one that fell through.

Where the Money Actually Went

Here's the number that tells the real story. As recently as 2023, Eagle County's working estimate for finishing the Horn Ranch to Edwards gap sat around $38 million. Once real engineering work started on those final miles, that figure climbed to a range of $54 to $64 million, depending on which of the three routing options gets chosen.

That's not inflation catching up to an old number. That's the cost of losing the easiest path and being forced onto harder ground, literally: railroad right-of-way negotiations, ditch owner agreements, or highway-adjacent retaining walls, none of which were on the table when the $38 million figure was set.

The money to build any of this comes from a patchwork that's been assembling for thirty years. Eagle County voters approved a 0.5% sales tax back in 1996 to fund transit and trail projects, and 10% of that tax, about $1.5 million a year, goes to ECO Trails for the whole regional system. In 2021, the county sold $22 million in Certificates of Participation at a 1.98% interest rate specifically to push the Eagle Valley Trail toward completion. The current phase also carries a $5 million federal grant, plus support from local municipalities, metro districts, Great Outdoors Colorado, and private donors.

Even local restaurants have chipped in. Through the end of 2025, Blue Moose Pizza in Vail and Beaver Creek, Mountain Fish House in Edwards, and Prosit in Avon each donated a dollar to the trail fund for every featured item sold off a fundraising menu. It's a small gesture next to a $60 million funding gap, but it's the kind of local buy-in that shows up on a menu before it shows up in a headline.

The 81 Percent Nobody Talks About

Eagle County's own trails office puts a number on this that changes how the whole project reads. Of the system's 62.7 total miles, 50.7 are already complete. That's just under 81% of the entire Eagle Valley Trail, finished and rideable today, stretching from the top of Vail Pass through Minturn, Avon, Eagle-Vail, Eagle, and toward Gypsum.

The remaining 19% is where the difficulty and the dollars are piling up. It's not that the county saved the hard part for last by choice. It's that the corridor between the river and the highway was always going to be the tightest squeeze on the whole route, and the one piece of private land that could have simplified it is now off the table.

For someone who already rides this trail regularly, that 81% figure is the thing worth carrying around. Most of the system has worked fine for years. The frustration locals feel at the Highway 6 shoulder gap isn't really about the county being slow. It's about the last fifth of a project being harder than the other four-fifths combined, and now harder still than it was in 2023.

What This Means for Riders This Fall

If you're commuting or riding recreationally between Eagle and Edwards this season, the practical takeaway is straightforward. The Mott's Landing to CDOT yard piece was targeted to open by late July, so that section should now be paved rather than a highway-shoulder detour. The next 2.7-mile piece toward the BLM fishing bridge is queued for 2026 construction once bidding wraps. The final approach into Edwards, the piece everyone actually wants finished, is still working through which of three costlier routes it will take, and that decision will shape both the timeline and the eventual price tag for the whole remaining gap.

None of the three routing options currently in play are settled. Anyone who rides this corridor regularly has a genuine reason to keep an eye on Eagle County's trail updates this winter, because the choice between the railroad right-of-way, the ditch owner agreement, and the highway-parallel build will determine how long the shoulder gap into Edwards actually lasts.

Kevin Kuebert has spent nearly two decades working this valley end to end, and that includes watching infrastructure like the Eagle Valley Trail take shape mile by mile. If you're weighing a move near this corridor, or just want a local's read on how a project like this affects daily life in Eagle, Edwards, or anywhere along the trail, Kevin Kuebert is glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.