Tubbs Hill a major attraction

COEUR d’ALENE — Tubbs Hill is a priceless treasure, but numbers also show just how well-loved and well-used it is.

A trail counter installed in July 2022 on the popular hiking hill on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene tallied 387,027 visitors to the 165 acres in 2024. The peak day was July 4, when 6,474 made the trek up, down or around the city-owned land.

Tubbs Hill, which is home to ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, Western white pine and larch trees, has a trail system that leads around, up to the 2,500-foot summit and down to the shoreline. 

It continues to attract locals and visitors who run, walk and hike its trails summer, fall, winter and spring, and has been the subject of a book, "The Treasure Called Tubbs Hill," by Scott Reed.

Despite so many people leaving footprints on Tubbs, its forest health remains in "good to fair."

City urban forester Nick Goodwin said the number of people on Tubbs impacts the trails, retaining walls and overall infrastructure.

"We don't want to treat it like a park," Goodwin said. "We want to treat it like a natural area."

One drawback of the traffic on Tubbs continues to be trash people leave behind.

"Pack it in, pack it out," Goodwin said. "There's no reason we should have volunteers pulling 10 bags of trash off Tubbs Hill."

David Taylor, president of the Tubbs Hill Foundation, said they got a lot accomplished in 2024, including:

• 850 feet of realigned trail constructed

• 40 white pine seedlings planted

• Four sections of Main Loop Trail reconstructed or adjusted to reduce erosion and safety concerns

• 1.2 miles of brush trimmed on trails

• 50 days of Tubbs Hill Ambassadors roaming the trails to provide information to hikers

• Two public cleanup days with many large bags of trash removed

• 135-plus Friends of Tubbs Hill participated in 25 trail-related projects with a documented 423 hours of volunteer time, calculated to be worth $12,792.

"This year was a productive one for the foundation, as several report articles will require significant efforts to keep it clean," Taylor wrote in the Foundation's annual report. "Fortunately the Coeur d'Alene Parks Department was able, with our support, to make major repairs to existing trails and add an additional entry point. These efforts along with the formal and informal cleanups will continue to be required to keep up with the visitation."