Park at Altenbrand Park on a September afternoon and you'll see the same thing you'd have seen five years ago: a paved path heading east off Yadon Road, wide enough for a stroller and a bike to pass without either one leaving the pavement, running along the south side of Dry Creek Road until it dead-ends at a fishing access site on the Gallatin River. Round trip, it's about four miles. Most people who use it treat it the way you'd treat a good neighborhood sidewalk. Walk the dog, wave at whoever's coming the other way, turn around at the river, go home.
What most of those walkers don't know is that the trail was never designed to end there. The nonprofit that maintains it, Manhattan Trail System Inc., was founded in 2019 for a single stated purpose: build a route connecting Manhattan to the existing Headwaters Trail System in Three Forks. Six years later, the piece everyone's still walking is the finished half. The other half, the one that would actually connect this town to anything, has spent those six years moving through federal grant applications, matching-fund paperwork, and a single public meeting at a local brewery. It hasn't yet moved through a single mile of new pavement.
What You're Actually Walking On
The existing loop is a real, functioning piece of infrastructure. On MTS's own account, the group describes it plainly: people use the trail for fitness, for catching up with neighbors, for walking pets, and just to take in the view. That's not marketing copy written for outsiders. It's the group's internal case for why the next stretch matters, aimed at the very residents already logging miles on the part that's done.
The catch is where the pavement stops. Dry Creek Road and the fishing access were always meant to be a midpoint, not a destination. The next leg would run west through Logan and tie into the paved network that already threads through Three Forks and out to Missouri Headwaters State Park, where the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers meet to form the Missouri.
The Miles Nobody Can Quite Agree On
Ask how long the missing connection actually is and you'll get a different answer depending on which year you ask. A January 2025 report on the project describes roughly eight miles running from Manhattan's west edge through Logan to the existing Headwaters system. An October 2024 grant announcement, describing the same effort, calls it a nine-mile connection. The discrepancy isn't sloppiness. It's a sign the route itself hasn't been locked down yet, and won't be until the feasibility study currently underway settles it.
That study is the current focus of the whole effort. MTS president Buck Buchanan and Headwaters Trail System chairperson Gene Townsend, who has worked on that side of the project since 1997, are the two names attached to most of the public record here. Their partner on the national side is the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, whose staff describe this connection as a meaningful piece of the Great American Rail-Trail, a nearly 4,000-mile route the conservancy is building across twelve states from Washington, D.C. to Washington state. A Manhattan-to-Three-Forks link would add a small percentage to Montana's portion of that route, but it's treated as a genuine milestone rather than a formality, since it's the piece that would eventually let a rider get from this stretch of the Gallatin Valley toward Belgrade and Bozeman without ever touching a highway shoulder.
Where the Money Actually Went
Here's the part that clarifies what "in progress" means in practice. In March 2024, the project received a $122,671 grant through the U.S. Department of Transportation's Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program, secured in partnership with Gallatin County. The feasibility study that grant is funding costs an estimated $153,339 total, with the difference covered by $30,668 in matching funds. Separately, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy put another $10,000 toward connecting a short 0.8-mile stretch within the existing Three Forks trail itself.
None of that money has paid for a foot of new pavement between Manhattan and Logan. It has paid for the process of figuring out where that pavement should go, who owns the land it would cross, and what it would cost to build it. The one public milestone residents could actually attend came on May 8, 2025, when Gallatin County hosted an open house on the feasibility study at 406 Brewing in Manhattan, inviting locals to weigh in on the route before engineers start drawing it.
What Got Paved Instead
While the Manhattan-to-Three Forks connector sat in study mode, the existing Three Forks trail kept getting maintained. This August, the Three Forks City Council approved a $224,016 bid from Big Sky Asphalt Inc. to resurface and repair sections of the already-built Headwaters Trail, work starting near the third Three Forks pond on Talc Road and continuing past the Madison River bridge. That's a routine municipal bid for an asset that already exists on paper, with an owner, a budget line, and a maintenance schedule.
Building nine new miles across land the trail system doesn't yet own, in a route that hasn't been finalized, is a different kind of project entirely. It needs federal money, county partnership, easements from whoever holds the land, and an engineering phase that can't start until the feasibility study finishes. An October 2024 report on the project floated a target of roughly two miles of new trail, running along an abandoned railroad bed, potentially opening to users sometime in 2026. There's no public sign yet that ground has broken on that stretch. The gap between the two projects isn't about which one the community cares about more. It's about which one was easier to fund.
The Long Game
None of this means the effort is stalled in any meaningful sense. It means it's moving at the speed new trail construction actually moves at, which is slower than anyone standing at Altenbrand Park with a leash in hand would prefer. The master plan Buchanan has described publicly goes well past Three Forks. Once the Manhattan-Logan-Three Forks piece is built, the next phase would push east from Four Corners into Belgrade and on toward Bozeman, near MAP Brewing Company, eventually aiming to link Livingston to Butte as part of the same national route. The Great American Rail-Trail was already more than half complete nationwide as of the fall 2024 update on this project, even with roughly 323 miles of gaps still left to fill inside Montana alone. The nine miles under study right now are a small piece of a very long project, which is exactly why nobody involved is treating a multi-year timeline as a setback.
What Still Works This Week
None of that changes what's actually open right now. The Manhattan Farmers Market still runs Wednesdays through the end of September, which puts its last few weeks of the season right now. Montana Corn Maze, out at 4605 W. Cameron Bridge Road, typically reopens for its fall season in the back half of September, a six-acre maze that's grown from under an acre when it started in 2010. Missouri Headwaters State Park, a short drive through Three Forks, is heading into its best stretch for fall color along the cottonwoods lining the three rivers.
And if you finish a walk on the existing trail hungry, the options in town haven't changed much. The building at 204 W. Main that spent four decades as Sir Scott's Oasis now runs as the Manhattan Saloon under new ownership. And 406 Brewing, the same spot that hosted last year's trail open house, is still pouring pints a short walk from where the pavement currently ends.
The trail isn't finished. But the town around it hasn't been waiting on it to function.
If you're weighing a move to Manhattan, Logan, or anywhere else along the Gallatin Valley and want a read on what a specific property actually offers beyond what's on the listing sheet, reach out to Brian Heck. A home valuation is a good place to start that conversation.
