Keil Trail
Short rung linking Wildwood to Dogwood near NW 53rd — named for the forester who built the fire lanes.
On this trailGetting there
Some trails are destinations; this one is a rung. The Keil Trail is a sixth-of-a-mile of dirt near NW 53rd Drive whose entire job is to hand you from the Wildwood Trail (near its 9¼-mile post) over to the Dogwood Trail — and from there a final 0.07 mile down Dogwood closes a tidy little loop back toward the parking area. It climbs a modest 80-odd feet across its short run, which is enough to make it feel like work and not enough to make it a destination. Come here to shorten a Dogwood-and-Wildwood circuit; don’t come here for its own sake.
What makes it worth a second thought is the name on the sign. Keil honors Bill Keil, Forest Park’s forester in the 1950s — the man who laid out the park’s numbered fire-lane system and replanted the ground after the great 1951 burn. That whole story lives on the Fire Lane 3 page, where you can actually walk across the scar; here, just know that the short connector under your feet carries the name of the person who gave the park its bones.
It’s foot-only and it’s brief — a runner folding a quick loop off the Wildwood will barely register it before Dogwood takes over.
Getting there
StartNo trailhead of its own to EndMerges into the Dogwood Trail
- Start
- No trailhead of its own — reach it on foot from the Wildwood Trail near milepost 9¼, above the NW 53rd Drive access
- Orientation
- Upper west edge of the park, in the NW 53rd Drive / Forest Lane trail cluster; the short link between Wildwood and Dogwood
- Parking
- No parking of its own; use the NW 53rd Drive pullout shared with Wild Cherry and Dogwood — a handful of informal shoulder spaces, tight on sunny weekends
- Other access
- Reached equally from the Dogwood Trail side, if you're stitching a loop up from Leif Erikson
- Ends at
- Merges into the Dogwood Trail; from there it's about another 0.07 mi down Dogwood back toward the NW 53rd area, closing a compact loop off the Wildwood
- Transit
- None direct to the NW 53rd Drive cluster; the nearest practical service is TriMet 15 to the Leif Erikson (Thurman) gate, then a long climb in
- Accessibility
- Not accessible — natural-surface dirt with a short climb; no paved segment or facilities
- Dogs
- leashed
- Best
- year-round; daylight only — it's a short, unlit forest connector