Nevada's First-Ever Statewide Trails Plan: What It Means for Hikers, Bikers, and Off-Road Riders Across the Silver State
For a state with more federally managed public land than nearly any other in the contiguous United States — a landscape that runs from alpine ridgelines above Lake Tahoe to the cracked alkali flats of the Black Rock Desert — Nevada has never had a single, unified roadmap for how its trails should be planned, built, connected, or managed. That changes now. The State of Nevada is moving to implement its first-ever Statewide Trails Plan, a landmark policy initiative that could reshape how millions of residents and visitors experience the outdoors across one of the most geographically diverse states in the American West.
The announcement, made on October 14, 2026, set the outdoor community buzzing from Reno's Peavine Mountain singletrack to the volcanic ridges south of Las Vegas. For anyone who has ever cursed a dead-end trail system, struggled to connect a route across competing land jurisdictions, or wondered why Nevada's trail infrastructure has lagged behind neighboring Utah and Colorado, this plan represents long-overdue institutional attention to a resource that adventurers have long taken for granted.
The Architecture of the Plan: Who's Driving It and Why Now
The Nevada Division of State Parks, in partnership with the Nevada Division of Outdoor Recreation, is inviting the public to help shape the future of trails across the state by participating in an online survey for Nevada's first-ever Statewide Trails Plan. The collaboration between these two agencies is itself significant — it signals that the plan will cut across the usual bureaucratic silos that have historically made coordinated trail management in Nevada so difficult to achieve.
The plan will help guide the future of trail development, access and management throughout Nevada, and support a wide range of recreational activities like hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, and off-highway vehicle (OHV) use. That's a wide tent, and intentionally so. Nevada's trail users are an eclectic group — weekend hikers out of Henderson, backcountry mountain bikers in Elko County, equestrian riders in the Carson Valley, and OHV enthusiasts hauling rigs to Sand Mountain. A plan that doesn't serve all of them is a plan that will fail politically and practically.
Public input will help identify opportunities to connect communities, improve existing trails, expand recreational access and protect Nevada's natural resources. That last phrase — protecting natural resources — is critical, and it will likely be where the most contentious policy conversations happen as the plan matures. Connecting trails between communities sounds straightforward until you're threading a route through sensitive desert tortoise habitat, across contested water rights, or over land where multiple federal agencies hold jurisdiction.
The Public Input Window: Open Until November 30
The survey is open through November 30, 2026. That gives outdoor enthusiasts, local trail advocacy groups, county planners, and individual riders and hikers roughly six weeks to weigh in — a narrow window for a document intended to guide the state's trail policy for generations. Through the survey, participants can share how they use Nevada's trails, what improvements they would like to see and where additional trail connections and recreational opportunities may be needed.
For the trail community, participation in this kind of public input process isn't optional — it's how priorities get written into policy. States that have successfully built world-class trail systems, from Utah's Mighty 5 corridor to Colorado's Front Range network, did so because organized user communities showed up loudly and consistently during the planning phases. Nevada's trail advocates know this window matters.
What State Officials Are Saying
The officials behind this initiative aren't speaking in abstractions. Both of the administrators leading the charge have offered language that points to where the policy emphasis will land.
Janice Keillor, Deputy Administrator for Nevada State Parks, said, "Trails connect communities, create opportunities for people to explore Nevada's public lands, and provide access to the outdoors for people of all abilities and interests. This plan is an opportunity to look at how we can build a more connected trail system that serves Nevadans and visitors for generations to come."
The emphasis on connectivity is telling. Nevada's existing trail infrastructure has long suffered from a fragmentation problem — exceptional segments of trail that dead-end into private land, wilderness boundaries, or simply unmaintained jeep roads with no legal public access. A connected trail system isn't just a convenience for recreational users; it's the difference between a destination that draws visitors from out of state and a local amenity that only people who already know where to go can use.
Denise Beronio, Administrator for the Nevada Division of Outdoor Recreation, said, "Trails are a cornerstone of Nevada's outdoor recreation experience, supporting local economies and allowing visitors to experience the incredible diversity of our state's landscapes. A statewide plan will help us better understand the needs of trail users, identify future opportunities, and ensure Nevada continues to offer world class outdoor recreation experiences."
Beronio's framing around economic impact isn't accidental. In a state where the outdoor recreation economy has grown into a genuine powerhouse, making the economic case for trail investment has become the most effective argument for securing legislative and budgetary support.
The Economic Stakes: A $24 Billion Outdoor Industry
The numbers behind Nevada's outdoor economy are staggering, and they provide the most compelling argument for why a statewide trails plan is not a nice-to-have but a strategic necessity. Analysis estimates that outdoor recreation generated approximately $24 billion in economic benefits in 2023, supporting more than 75,000 jobs statewide, including in the Tahoe Basin.
Even looking at just the market-measured portion of that figure, outdoor recreation accounted for more than $6.1 billion of Nevada's gross domestic product in 2022. Accounting for 2.7 percent of the state's GDP, that figure was among the highest in the nation, outperforming the national average of 2.2 percent. Nevada's outdoor recreation sector isn't punching at its weight — it's outperforming most comparable Western states on a per-capita basis.
A section of the Economic Impact Analysis highlights the $14 billion Nevada economy stimulated by outdoor recreation — a figure that underscores just how consequential trail infrastructure is to communities far beyond the trailhead. Hotels in Ely fill up when the mountain bike trails are rideable. Gas stations in Winnemucca see business when OHV riders head for the desert. Gear shops in Reno track their sales cycles against trail conditions at Peavine and Tahoe East Shore.
The investment Nevada has already made in outdoor recreation infrastructure confirms this awareness. Recreation and other outdoor projects across Nevada recently received $42 million in new funding, with investments touching projects including major trail systems such as the Vegas Valley Rim Trail, the Wetlands Loop Trail at Clark County Wetlands Park, and the Lake Tahoe East Shore Trail. A statewide trails plan would give all of these scattered investments a coherent strategic framework — the difference between individual bets and a coordinated portfolio.
Nevada's Trail Landscape: The Scope of What's at Stake
To understand why this plan matters, you have to appreciate the sheer scale and variety of Nevada's trail inventory. Nevada's trail network encompasses mountain biking, e-biking, gravel biking, adaptive biking, horseback riding, hiking, trail running, dirt biking, ATV/OHV, snowmobiling, and ski touring — a statewide trail count of 1,956 designated trails covering 3,085 total miles. That's a substantial network, but it's one that has developed largely without centralized coordination, leaving significant gaps in connectivity, maintenance standards, and signage consistency.
The geography of Nevada defies easy categorization. In the north, the Sierra Nevada and Carson Range offer classic alpine terrain — granite singletrack, exposed ridgelines, and the kind of high-country riding and hiking that draws people from across the country to spots like Spooner Lake and the Tahoe Rim Trail. Drift east from Reno and the terrain shifts dramatically: Basin and Range topography, sky island mountain ranges separated by vast desert basins, with trail experiences that range from high-desert sagebrush cruisers to technical volcanic rock routes. In the south, Red Rock Canyon, the Spring Mountains, and the trails feeding out of Las Vegas offer desert terrain that's become increasingly well-known on the national mountain biking and trail running circuits.
What these regions share is a patchwork of land management — Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, Nevada State Parks, National Park Service, tribal lands, and private holdings all butting up against each other in ways that make a coherent trail system challenging to build without exactly the kind of statewide planning framework now being proposed. The Nevada Division of State Parks has already been administering the Recreational Trails Program, a federally funded grant program that helps build and improve outdoor trails across the state, funded through the Federal Highway Administration and providing critical support for creating and maintaining both motorized and non-motorized trails. A statewide trails plan would give those grant dollars a more strategic target.
The Activities the Plan Must Serve
One of the most complex challenges the statewide plan will face is mediating between user groups whose interests sometimes conflict. Hikers and equestrians often prefer quiet, non-motorized routes. Mountain bikers want flow trails and purpose-built singletrack. OHV riders need legally designated routes with adequate turning radius, surface hardening, and staging areas. Getting all of these communities to co-exist — and often co-invest — in the same trail system requires exactly the kind of comprehensive policy architecture a statewide plan provides.
The kinds of trail investments supported by existing programs include building or maintaining recreational trails, installing trailhead amenities like restrooms, parking, or kiosks, adding signs or markers along trails, supporting outdoor education programs, and conducting planning or environmental reviews related to trail development. These are the bones of a functioning trail system — the infrastructure that separates a destination trail network from a collection of unmarked dirt paths.
Elyse Jolly, Park and Recreation Program Manager for Nevada State Parks, has said of the existing trails funding program: "RTP grants are a key part of how Nevada supports access to our great outdoors. From backcountry trail maintenance to building new accessible routes, this program helps ensure our trails are safe, sustainable, and welcoming to all." That language around safety and sustainability will likely become central to the statewide plan as well, particularly as Nevada's trail user numbers keep climbing.
In recent years, funding has supported projects such as constructing new sections of the Sierra Front Trail in Washoe County, adding accessible signage and pathways at Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, and maintaining trails in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. These are exactly the kinds of investments that a coherent statewide plan would help prioritize and scale.
The Digital Infrastructure Already in Place
Nevada hasn't been entirely passive on the trails front. In 2022, state agencies launched a significant digital resource that now gives the statewide plan a foundation to build on. Outdoor recreation partners launched the "Nevada Trail Finder," Nevada's first-ever comprehensive web-based map featuring thousands of miles of recreational trails statewide — described as a centralized one-stop-shop for trails.
That digital mapping effort was important groundwork, but a searchable online map and a binding statewide plan are very different things. The former helps users find trails that already exist; the latter determines which trails get built, where money flows, how land managers coordinate, and what standards guide trail construction and maintenance across different agencies and jurisdictions. The Statewide Trails Plan is the policy engine; the Trail Finder is the dashboard.
How Nevada Compares to Its Neighbors — and What It Can Learn
Look at the states on Nevada's borders and the contrast in trail policy maturity is stark. Utah has operated under a comprehensive outdoor recreation plan for years, with trail development closely tied to tourism marketing and economic development strategy. The result has been a virtuous cycle: investment in trails drives visitation, visitation drives economic data, and economic data justifies more investment. Colorado's trail system, particularly along the Front Range and in mountain towns like Crested Butte and Moab-adjacent communities, was built on decades of coordinated planning between land managers, local governments, and advocacy groups like the Colorado Trail Foundation and IMBA regional chapters.
Nevada has the raw terrain to compete with either of those states. What it has lacked is the institutional framework. The Statewide Trails Plan is an attempt to close that gap — to give Nevada the same kind of strategic coherence that has allowed Utah and Colorado to transform trail infrastructure into genuine economic engines for rural communities that might otherwise be entirely dependent on extractive industries.
The timing is also significant from a national policy standpoint. Nevada has already been recognized on the national stage, with the Mountain West Trails Conference set to come to Nevada in 2028, in collaboration with all the mountain west states, highlighting the trails and recreation opportunities in the region. Hosting that event without a statewide trails plan would have been awkward. Hosting it with a newly implemented plan — one informed by robust public input — gives Nevada a story to tell.
The Adventure Center Connection: A Broader Outdoor Vision
The statewide trails plan doesn't exist in isolation. It's part of a broader push by Nevada to position itself as a premier outdoor recreation destination, one that competes not just on the strength of Las Vegas entertainment but on the quality of its public lands and trail experiences. That push has been gaining momentum across multiple fronts.
Nevada Division of Tourism officially opened its Travel Nevada Adventure Center in Boulder City on October 7, 2026 — a first-of-its-kind outdoor recreation hub designed to connect visitors and residents with southern Nevada's outdoor experiences, businesses, and resources. Located near Lake Mead and roughly 30 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip, the center is a direct acknowledgment that millions of visitors who come to Nevada for the casinos represent an untapped market for outdoor adventure.
The Boulder City Adventure Center brings together seven businesses offering different outdoor experiences, including Canyon Riders LLC and Loop Trail Rentals for electric bicycle rentals, and Desert Adventures offering kayaking, hiking, and cycling experiences. That kind of concentrated outdoor experience infrastructure, paired with a statewide trails plan that creates better connectivity and more destination-worthy routes, creates exactly the kind of ecosystem that turns casual visitors into repeat outdoor travelers.
What the Plan Needs to Get Right
The opportunity is real, but so are the pitfalls. Statewide trail plans that don't earn buy-in from the people who actually use the trails tend to gather dust. The public input process that runs through November 30 is therefore one of the most consequential phases of the entire initiative. If the survey draws primarily from urban Reno and Las Vegas populations, the resulting plan risks overlooking the trail needs of rural counties — places like Elko, Humboldt, and Nye, where OHV riding and multi-day wilderness traverses are the primary forms of trail use.
Connectivity is the most cited priority, and for good reason. The Nevada Division of State Parks says the plan will help guide the future of trail development, access and management throughout Nevada and support activities like hiking, mountain biking and more. But development and management are meaningless without access — and access in Nevada is frequently limited not by a lack of trails but by a lack of legal through-routes connecting public lands across private inholdings. The plan will need to address land access, easements, and interagency coordination as seriously as it addresses trail construction.
Maintenance funding is the other elephant in the room. Nevada has plenty of examples of trails that were built with grant dollars and then gradually deteriorated because no ongoing maintenance budget was ever secured. A statewide plan that focuses only on building new trails without establishing sustainable maintenance mechanisms would be incomplete at best and counterproductive at worst.
Accessibility and Inclusion
Both Keillor and Beronio have used language emphasizing access "for people of all abilities and interests," and that phrasing deserves to be taken seriously rather than treated as boilerplate. Nevada's trail system has historically been inaccessible to users with physical limitations — a gap that represents both a civil rights issue and an untapped market. Nevada's trail network includes adaptive bike trails among its trail types, but the statewide plan has an opportunity to dramatically expand accessible route options, particularly in urban and peri-urban areas where demand is highest.
The Path Forward
The launch of Nevada's first Statewide Trails Plan is a milestone that deserves recognition — and scrutiny. The state has the terrain, the economic data, the institutional partners, and now the policy initiative to build one of the great trail systems in the American West. What happens next depends almost entirely on two things: the quality of public input collected between now and November 30, and the political will to implement what that input recommends.
For the hikers, mountain bikers, trail runners, equestrians, and OHV riders who have been navigating Nevada's fragmented trail landscape for decades, this is the moment to make noise. Fill out the survey. Show up to public meetings. Contact local trail advocacy groups and make sure they're coordinating their input. The plan that emerges from this process will shape what trails get built, which connections get funded, and how Nevada manages its wild places for the next generation of outdoor users.
"Trails are a cornerstone of Nevada's outdoor recreation experience, supporting local economies and allowing visitors to experience the incredible diversity of our state's landscapes," Beronio has said. "A statewide plan will help us better understand the needs of trail users, identify future opportunities, and ensure Nevada continues to offer world class outdoor recreation experiences." Those are the right words. Now comes the hard work of making them real.
