Lewis and Clark County seeks trail funding for Northstar Park plan

Lewis and Clark County is seeking state trail money for the first visible piece of Northstar Park, a county-owned Helena Valley site that has sat in the planning pipeline since August 2013. The county’s January 2025 grant request to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks would help pay for a 3,000-foot, 6-foot-wide natural-surface trail around the park perimeter, along with six benches and seven signs.

The park itself is just under 18 acres, north of Lincoln Road and west of North Montana Avenue in the Northstar Subdivision and North Hills area. It was established in August 2013, when the last phase of Northstar Subdivision won final approval, and it remains dedicated county parkland to be maintained as public space in perpetuity.

The December 2024 master plan approved by the Lewis and Clark County Board of County Commissioners lays out a much larger buildout than a simple walking loop. The plan calls for a community room with restrooms, basketball courts, pickleball courts, a tennis court, a waterwise demonstration garden, a tot playground, a full playground, a half-mile loop, a multi-use lawn, berms and seating, stormwater-retention features, interpretive signage, a pavilion overlook, a native meadow, a paved pump track and skate park, a sledding hill and a baseball backstop. The park is a nearly 18-acre regional park serving neighborhoods and the broader community in the North Hills area of Helena Valley.

The project is an ADA-accessible trail built with 1/4-inch minus crusher fines and a trailhead parking lot for about 25 cars. The broader county park system already covers about 407 acres of developed and undeveloped parkland plus many miles of shared-use paths and trails.

The master plan was written as a conceptual framework and guide, not a finished build schedule, and the board and the public are still shaping the project through the regular parks process. The City-County Consolidated Parks Board, created by a 1999 interlocal agreement between Helena and Lewis and Clark County, remains part of that oversight structure.