Milwaukee County Parks marked the completion of a new stretch of the Oak Leaf Trail in Oak Creek on Thursday, holding a 10 a.m. ribbon-cutting for the Bender Park Oak Leaf Trail Extension. The project adds more than a mile of 10-foot-wide paved trail through Bender Park, connecting Bender Roadway to Oakwood Road along the trail's South Shore Line.
According to Milwaukee County Parks, the extension is designed to close a gap in the regional trail network and eventually help create a continuous 20-mile bike facility stretching through Milwaukee and Racine counties. As CBS 58 reported Thursday, the extension in Oak Creek is now open.
The project traces back further than most people might expect. County Parks says construction activities began in February, with work anticipated to continue through the fall, while the broader vision for connecting this stretch of trail dates back nearly two decades.
A Trail Plan Two Decades in the Making
The Bender Park project, along with a companion effort at Kohl Park, was first proposed in 2007 as part of Milwaukee County's Trail Network Plan, according to Urban Milwaukee. That same reporting noted the project was awarded roughly $1.3 million in federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funding in 2020, with the county required to cover a 20% local match. County Parks lists the exact figure as $1,306,400, awarded in conjunction with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
The newly opened stretch through Bender Park represents the second and final phase of that long-running project, the outlet's later coverage noted. An earlier phase had already built a trail connecting E. Drexel Avenue near the Oak Creek River Parkway to Bender Park, filling in part of the route before this latest extension pushed the trail further south.
One wrinkle along the way: a section of the route crossing We Energies property had remained a gravel trail rather than pavement, because the utility had plans to upgrade a gas main running along that stretch, per the outlet's reporting.
Linking Toward Racine County
The stated goal behind the extension has consistently been to push the Oak Leaf Trail network south, bringing cyclists closer to the Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha Trail in northern Racine County. That framing has held steady across multiple years of coverage, with the county describing the finished product as a way to stitch together a 20-mile continuous bike facility spanning the two counties.
Cost estimates for the work have varied depending on the source. WISN 12 has reported that federal dollars covered about 80 percent of a $3 million project, a separate figure from the $1.3 million CMAQ grant cited elsewhere. The Oak Leaf Trail itself now stretches more than 100 miles across the region, according to that station's reporting.
Part of a Growing Regional Network
The Bender Park extension isn't the only recent addition to the sprawling trail system. WISN 12 also reported on a separate roughly one-mile Oak Creek segment that opened to bikers, runners and walkers, closing another gap in the network. Together, these incremental extensions reflect a slow, multi-year effort by Milwaukee County to knit its trail system into something that eventually reaches well beyond county lines.
For now, Thursday's ribbon-cutting closes out a project that began with a 2020 federal grant and construction that started in February, giving Oak Creek residents and regional cyclists a new stretch of paved path through Bender Park.
