East of Main Street at Airport Road, beside Earl Guss Park, a pedestrian underpass runs beneath the busiest road in the Heights. The city dedicated it on November 10, 2010, and described it as the link between the Aronson, Alkali Creek and Swords Park trail segments. The Jim Dutcher Trail meets the Alkali Creek Trail near the same park. This one corner is where most of the Heights' paved trail system comes together.
This summer the City/County Planning Division asked the public about three new connections to that system. The more useful question for anyone who walks or rides these paths is which one gets built first. The city's proposed capital plan gives a tentative answer. The two links that extend trails already in use come first. The link that would open a new route to the north comes last and costs more than the other two put together.
The Spine That's Already There
Each of the three proposed links would attach to a trail that already exists. Here's what those trails look like today, based on current trail listings.
| Trail | Surface and length | Endpoints and access |
|---|---|---|
| Jim Dutcher Trail | Paved, 6.5 miles | Mary Street between Bench Boulevard and Hawthorne Lane to Mystic Park, with access at Two Moon, Earl Guss, Coulson and Mystic parks |
| Alkali Creek Trail | Paved, 2.2 miles | A Senators Boulevard and Alkali Creek Road segment toward Swords Park and Aronson Avenue, plus an eastern segment near Main Street to Jim Dutcher at Bench Boulevard |
| Aronson Avenue Trail | Paved, half a mile | Camel Place and Aronson Avenue to the Swords Park Trail at Alkali Creek Road, with a dirt parking area north of Aronson Bridge |
| Skyline Trail | Asphalt, 7 miles | Zimmerman Park to Swords Park, with its eastern end tying into the Alkali Creek and Aronson Avenue trails |
The listings suggest Alkali Creek Elementary School or nearby side streets for parking on the Alkali Creek Trail. Read together, the four trails form a rough line. Jim Dutcher heads south and west toward Two Moon, Coulson and Mystic parks. Alkali Creek and Aronson head north and west from the Main Street area toward Swords Park. Skyline then runs west along the rims to Zimmerman Park. The system is long but has few branches, and the three proposed connections would add branches at three different points.
Three Gaps, Three Different Kinds of Project
The study, called "Trails for All," held its open house on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Billings Public Library Community Room at 510 N. Broadway. The city set four goals for the study: find out whether each trail is technically feasible, identify possible alignments, estimate construction costs and gather public opinion on the options. No construction has been approved.
The three proposals differ in how much new ground they cover.
- Downtown to Heights. This link would leave downtown on South 25th Street and follow Eighth Avenue South, South 26th Street and Lillian Avenue. It would pass under I-90 at the railroad and join the Jim Dutcher Trail near where Charlene Street meets the railroad tracks. The Billings Gazette reported that early talks with the refinery found Lillian workable and Erie Drive not, and that the exact route could still shift slightly.
- Alkali Creek Connection. This link would extend the Alkali Creek Trail corridor from the Main Street tunnel along the creek to the Aronson Connection Trail, just east of Aronson Bridge.
- Aronson Avenue to Annandale Road. This route would begin on Aronson Avenue about 500 feet southwest of Governors Boulevard. It would follow city-owned park land northwest to Constitution Avenue, then cross a mix of city and state land up to Wicks Lane. From there it would join the West Wicks/Skyway Drive Trail and continue north to where Annandale Road is expected to be extended in the future.
The first two links start from trails that already carry people. The Downtown to Heights link gives the Jim Dutcher Trail a direct connection toward downtown. The Alkali Creek link fills in the creek corridor between the Main Street tunnel and Aronson Bridge, both of which people already use. The third link runs north across land between Aronson Avenue and Wicks Lane toward a road extension that hasn't been built.
What the Draft Budget Says About Order
The order shows up in a document most trail users will never open. The City of Billings' Capital Improvement Plan for fiscal 2027 through 2031 carries a cover date of "Proposed 11/17/2025." Its Planning Department transportation table lists all three study links.
| Proposed connection | FY 2027 | Construction-year amount | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alkali Creek Trail Connection | $30,000 | $460,000 in FY 2029 | $490,000 |
| Downtown-Heights Trail Connection | $30,000 | $720,000 in FY 2029 | $750,000 |
| Aronson to Annandale | $40,000 | $1,660,000 in FY 2031 | $1,700,000 |
The two links that extend existing trails total $1.24 million and share the same fiscal year for their large allocation. The Aronson to Annandale route alone is listed at $1.7 million, and its large allocation comes two years later. The draft plan doesn't say why. The schedule does line up with the route's description, though, since it ends at a road extension the Gazette calls expected rather than underway.
The figures need two caveats. First, the plan was a proposal dated eight months before the July open house, so its amounts were set before the study gathered any public input. Second, the plan's comments on each of the three projects say it "is not programmed with currently available funds and is dependent on future funding for completion." Some of that future funding is tied to competitive grant programs the city plans to pursue. The city keeps the projects in the plan so it can show a formal commitment when it applies for those grants. The dates in the table show the order the city intends, not money it has in hand. The research behind this post found no feasibility study cost estimates published after the open house.
The same table helps with scale. The Heights links appear alongside other Planning Department projects, including a $1.79 million Yellowjacket Trail and a $700,000 trail connector from King Avenue West to the TransTech Center. The Heights links make up three of the table's eight lines. The full table totals $12.385 million over five years.
What Hasn't Been Decided Yet
On July 29, Billings TrailNet posted a summary of the library session. It listed the three connectors the city presented for feedback, with Aronson Avenue to Annandale Road first. As of early October 2026, no survey results, preferred alignments, draft report, post-open-house cost estimates or construction schedule had been published for any of the three links. Several key questions are still open:
- Whether the Downtown to Heights route stays on Lillian Avenue through the refinery area, or shifts within the "slightly" varied route the Gazette described
- What the study's own cost figures turn out to be, compared with the amounts in the draft capital plan
- How the Aronson to Annandale link would connect with the West Wicks/Skyway Drive Trail, which the Gazette names only as a connection point
- Whether public comments from July change the order the draft plan suggests
The study's project page is at the City of Billings Trails for All Feasibility Study page. Updates are most likely to appear there and in Billings TrailNet's posts. The same TrailNet post reported that Billings Parks and Recreation finished the Amend Park Trail Connector in mid-July. That shows a city trail connector moving from plan to finished path in 2026, even though that one is outside the Heights.
For now, the paved routes in the Heights are the ones in the first table. The Main Street underpass by Earl Guss Park remains the point where Jim Dutcher, Alkali Creek, Aronson and Swords Park come together. If the draft plan's order holds, the next paved section will connect to that existing system, and the new route north toward Annandale Road will come later.
Trail plans like this one turn into fixed things on a map: an easement, a path along a back fence or a new link to a park. When you want to know what's planned near a street you care about, The Premier Group follows these planning documents and can walk you through what's proposed, what's funded and what's still just a line on a study map.
