You're not kidding on the distance. Google shows it being 97 miles from Oregon City. Detroit looks like a good way to go, not too far north of there.

It is a long drive to that trailhead, but it is mostly paved roads.  Looking at that, it would provide the ability to do a little more reasonable look hike on Geronimo - last time I did it, it was 14.5 miles - that was a long day.  I just did a rough track, and it looks like it might cut 3 or 4 miles off that if I used this trail.  Sounds like a plan for a future hike.  My list of "new" trails to hike keeps getting longer!

I think this is a great find and I can see using it in a nice loop on trails and roads I've never been before. Park at Elk Lake and do Elk Lake Creek Trail down to the shelter then up this trail to get on the forest boundary (beat up on some brush on the way up). Older maps like the '38 show trail (lesser standard) all along the forest boundary. Google Earth shows some views along the way and there's some trail in there. Follow the forest boundary, visit Gold Butte then back to Elk Lake.

Stash a bike at the end of the 451 spur to cut off the road walk back to Elk Lake. Visit Dunlop Lake.

Going to be quite a day, thx for the info...

I'm making plans to do something in this area and was looking at the old cadastral plots. I'm not sure if particular one has been mentioned before but I thought I post a snippet. Here is a link to the BLM site for the original.

Shows the trail in question but also names the trail on the south side of Elk Lake Creek as the 'Old Elk Lake Creek Trail' - the 38 map shows a lesser standard trail in there. Interesting - I may go take a look. I hope to do the loop I mentioned previously this coming week so thanks Doug for posting the image of your track.

Nice find, Paul!  Will be interesting to see if you find anything.

FYI, we do have all the Cadastral maps here on Trailadvocate (they were copied from the BLM website).  If you use this page:

http://www.trailadvocate.org/maps/testSelector.html

And click in the general vicinity of the elk lake creek trail near the shelter area, it will give you a list of a whole slew of maps that cover that area.  Once of them is the 1941 Cadastral map: