Alaska's trail grants reopen, with up to $100,000 on the table

Trail groups, tribal governments and local governments can start applying Wednesday for federal money that covers up to 90% of a trail project's cost, with up to $100,000 available to a successful applicant. The recipient covers the remaining 10% as a non-federal match.

The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is running the FY2027 Multi-Use Trails cycle from Aug. 19 through Oct. 30. It's Alaska's share of the Federal Highway Administration's Recreational Trails Program, a competitive matching-grant program that reimburses recipients for approved costs after they spend the money. The money can go toward trail maintenance and development, trail-related facilities, and trail safety and education, and the list of who can apply is broad — nonprofits, schools, state and federal agencies, local governments, Native corporations and tribal governments.

The program is new to DOT&PF this year, having moved over from the Department of Natural Resources' Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation. Alaska News previously covered the first awards under the department's new ATLAS initiative, which sent more than $2.2 million to 15 trail projects around the state.

One open question is who can actually compete for money like this. At a February meeting of the state's Recreational Trails Advisory Committee, member Andy Morrison said of a related snow-trails cycle that villages without an organized club were "effectively excluded from this funding," and the First Nations Development Institute has raised the broader concern that grant processes like this one can be a heavy lift for smaller or rural organizations without dedicated grant-writers. The department, for its part, is offering an online application training on Sept. 2 to help applicants through the process, and the program remains formally open to exactly those tribal and village governments — a gap, in other words, that lies less in who is eligible than in who has the capacity to apply.

Applicants have to post a required local public notice by Sept. 29 and show DOT&PF where and when it ran. Applications are taken only through the online Submittable platform, with the program details and link on DOT&PF's ATLAS trails page.