Taft Tunnel Preservation
Near Taft, Montana, on the Idaho Side, Shoshone County
- Grant: 1999
Location: Route of the Hiawatha Trail, Taft.
The town of Taft is in Montana, 4 miles from the Idaho border.
The 46-mile trail is built on the abandoned Milwaukee Railroad grade between St. Regis, Montana and Pearson, Idaho. It’s gentle two percent grade and a 20-foot wide roadbed provides cyclists and hikers an outstanding historical and recreational experience. Trail users go through 10 tunnels and over nine high steel trestles. They cross the Bitterroot Mountains on the Idaho/Montana border through the 1.8-mile St. Paul Pass or “Taft Tunnel.” Trust funds were used to help repair the Tunnel.
Sometime around 1993, the Taft Tunnel Preservation Society (TTPS) was formed to refurbish the Taft Tunnel as a bike trail. TTPS was an Idaho nonprofit corporation based in Wallace, Shoshone County, Idaho. It has now been dissolved. The tunnel was fixed up and there is now a 15 mile bike trail with a number of tunnels and trestles. The Lookout Pass Ski Area has the bike trail concession through the US Forest Service.
