Where will the future lead for Willow Glen’s Three Creeks Trail?

The mile-long western portion of the Three Creeks Trail is open for business between Minnesota and Coe avenues in Willow Glen. It already was a long road to last Saturday’s ribbon-cutting, and the path’s future is paved with question marks.

How and when will the crucial eastern alignment of the trail, connecting to the Coyote Creek Trail at Kelley Park, be completed? And how will the drama surrounding the railroad trestle over Los Gatos Creek finally end? The 91-year-old wooden structure — the key piece that prevents Three Creeks from linking up with the Los Gatos Creek Trail — is still on the state register of historic places. A judge has upheld the city’s right to demolish it, but a permit needed for demolition has expired.

But even getting the Three Creeks Trail to this point is an accomplishment worth celebrating. The effort took nearly a decade, funding from several sources and the cooperation of a number of public agencies. And its completion marked an important milestone in San Jose’s quest to create a 100-mile trail network.

“We have 60 miles built and ready to explore,” San Jose City Councilwoman Dev Davis said at the ribbon cutting, where she was joined by her two predecessors, Ken Yeager and Pierluigi Oliverio, who both worked on the project. “As our city grows, it’s important for everyone — and to me especially — to have these paths to natural escape, to actually see some green.”

The Three Creeks Trail — the name refers to Coyote Creek, Los Gatos creek and the Guadalupe River — actually had its start in a house on Riverside Drive in Willow Glen. That’s where Taisia and Ross McMahon moved into the neighborhood nine years ago. They had expected to have a trail and open space in the spot behind their house where Union Pacific had ripped up the tracks of an abandoned spur line just a few years earlier. But after she received a letter indicating houses would be built there instead, she was off and running.

A flurry of phone calls and neighborhood meetings followed, eventually leading to the formation of Save Our Trails, a grassroots nonprofit that advocates for the creation of more trails for pedestrians and cyclists through San Jose’s car-centric neighborhoods. With grants from the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority and the County of Santa Clara, San Jose purchased the right-of-way from Union Pacific for $6 million, and construction on the trail began in earnest last year.

When she started this effort, Taisia McMahon said Saturday, she dreamed that she would one day share the trail with her two children. “Nine years later, we will walk the western alignment of the Three Creeks Trail together,” said McMahon, who has since passed on leadership of Save Our Trails to current president Bill Rankin.

The two-lane paved path includes benches and wayfinding signs at key intersections, as well as markers that provide a nod to the area’s history including the railroads and canneries. An iris garden blooms in an area near Iris Garden Court, a cul-de-sac named for the gardens once planted there by sisters Clare and Ruth Rees in the 1930s. The one major break is at the intersection of Willow Street and Bird Avenue, with the trail’s northern entrance marked by a water tower sculpture emblazoned with the number “3,” one of several appearances the number makes on the path.

McMahon called the trail “a hope for the future” but she knows that future will require an even greater effort.

“The full length of this trail includes the eastern alignment that winds to Happy Hollow and connects the Coyote Creek Trail to our East Side and South County neighbors,” she said. “The importance of private and public partnerships is critical for this future section of the trail. If we plan for the trail, it’ll become the green commute the city needs.”

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