Maryhill Loops Hike

Overview

A walk on a paved highway is not everyone's idea of a hike, but this historic route is now closed to vehicle traffic, and hikers can enjoy the vistas and the solitude although the busy U.S. 97 is not far away. This section of the Maryhill Loops Road ascends almost 1,000 feet into the Columbia Hills on 12 hairpin bends. The road was built by Sam Hill, the entrepreneur and railroad man who built the Maryhill Museum of Art and Maryhill Stonehenge, both of which can be visited on the same day you do the hike. Hill called upon engineer Samuel C. Lancaster to design the Loops Road, and the project became a prototype for Lancaster's much more ambitious venture a few years later, the Columbia River Highway. The Maryhill Loops Road was first paved from 1909 to 1913, the first asphalt highway in the state of Washington. Sam Hill intended that wheat farmers would transport their produce down to his railroad. Washington State built U.S. 97 on the other side of the drainage in 1948. The Loops Road was closed in the 1960s, having been declared unfit by the Washington Department of Transportation. It was refurbished in 1998 by the DOT and can now be used for special events, such as long boarding, street luge races, and classic car parades. The area that encompasses the loops, about 6,000 acres, is owned by the Maryhill Museum of Art, and the lands on either side of the loops are leased for crop growing and cattle range. At the trailhead, an interpretive sign tells about the Maryhill Museum's stewardship of these 6,000 acres. From the stile and gate, hike along the road above a creek shaded by evergreen blackberry, white alder, and a few locust trees. Walk around a bend in an avenue of white-barked deciduous trees, and then pass under an arbor of white poplars. Reach a corral before heading into the first sharp loop - there may be cattle near the road here. Above the corral, the real ascent begins at a 25-degree gradient, a heavy task for the automobiles of the early 20th century. You're now in open country dotted with pink f

Trail Stats

Photos

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