The Lost Sierra has spent decades looking for its next boom. It might arrive on two wheels, four hooves and a good pair of boots.
The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship has finished its Connected Communities Trails Master Plan, a blueprint nearly five years in the making that charts a trail network of more than 500 miles linking 16 mountain towns between the Tahoe area and Lassen country. Hundreds of community meetings, surveys and mapping sessions shaped the final route.
The centerpiece is the Lost Sierra Route, a corridor stitching together new singletrack, existing trails and backcountry roads across six counties. Truckee, Downieville, Quincy, Graeagle, Portola, Greenville, Chester and Susanville all sit along the line, with Reno anchoring the Nevada end. Unlike the Pacific Crest Trail, the route welcomes nearly everyone: hikers, mountain bikers, equestrians and dirt bike riders alike.
The stakes go beyond recreation. Many of these towns watched their timber and mining economies dry up, then took brutal hits from wildfire. The stewardship, which has built more than 100 miles of new trail since 2003, sees a connected trail system as a steadier economic engine that funnels travelers straight into small town main streets…