Skip to main content

Davis Journal

Trails and guns don’t mix in Centerville

Jul 07, 2022 01:30PM ● By Linda Petersen

CENTERVILLE—Conflicts between different recreational uses in suburban areas are common. Now Centerville is finding itself in the middle of such an issue between trail users and gun enthusiasts.

Members of the local Centerville Small Arms gun club use the gun range near what is known as “the V” on the city’s east hillside. They have become concerned that an unnamed trail just south of the mouth of Deuel Creek Canyon is infringing on gun range land there and could be violating some of the club’s insurance requirements. But local runners and mountain bikers say they’ve been using the trail for years. It’s unclear when the trail, which is shown on the city’s master plan, was formally established – if ever. The gun range is leased by the club from the city.

“I would question that it goes back 20 years, and I don’t know if anyone absolutely knows,” City Councilmember Bill Ince, who is the council’s liaison with the trails committee, told the council on June 7. “The trails people say, ‘Oh that’s been there forever.’ The gun club people say they started cutting it a number of years ago, we don’t really know when.”

“It’s a violation which to some degree does not appear to be real severe, but people being people tend to walk where they want to walk and so some people will cut across the range,” he said. “This particular trail violates the minimum distance from trials to where active shooting goes which is required for insurance provisions, and that’s why it’s significant.”

“We are working on resolving that issue and creating a better warning system so that people using the trails will know more clearly when the gun club is in operation,” he said.

The trail is becoming more popular which may be exacerbating the problem, Trails committee chair Mike Remington said at a May 19 trails committee meeting. “I think that’s the concern and mainly people riding it while they have the flag up.” (A red flag indicates the gun range is in use).

At that meeting, committee members expressed a willingness to ensure the trail is outside of the lease area. They also discussed having some kind of movable barricade, or even a post and chain that could be put into place when the range is in use to help make the area even more secure. A dirt pile partially blocking the trail on the road may have been left over from a maintenance day the gun club did to address erosion, Remington said. 

City Manager Brant Hanson told the city council at the June 7 meeting the city had received a complaint about the pile from a trail rider.

“What has happened is the pile … and the steep drop off on the other end of the trail,” he said. “When they’re coming down, it’s really hard to see that it drops off if you’re going from south to north [on the trail] and it has created a liability that needs to be rectified as soon as possible.”

City officials and trails club members all said that better signage is needed to make trail users aware of the gun range and to educate them on when it is in use. Currently the only signage is the red flag. 

Hanson told the council at the June 7 meeting that the trail may actually not violate the club’s insurance requirements. He and City Attorney Lisa Romney will review the insurance agreement and work with both groups to come up with a workable solution, he said. He felt confident they could work things out but if that was not possible, he would bring the issue back to the city council for resolution, Hanson added. City council members encouraged Hanson and Ince to continue to work the situation out among the various parties.

“As we get into compatible use issues and more desire to do more things on the hillside, this is a great opportunity for us to see how we can make peaceful coexistence with mutually exclusive uses,” Councilmember George McEwan said.λ