HAY FLATS JEWEL

PALMER — In a handful of hours Saturday afternoon, a non-profit organization installed a bridge to finally complete the trail around Reflections Lake.

Randi Perlman, executive director of Alaskans for Palmer Hay Flats, said the group put in for a grant to complete the trail five years ago.

The lake has something of a storied past. Joe Meehan with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game wrote in an e-mail that the lake started as an open pit, dug in the 1960s to supply gravel to build the Glenn Highway.

It became a site for family activities — boating and canoeing — but also for high school parties. Gradually those activities faded in favor of more criminal and destructive pastimes. It came to be something of a dumping ground, home to discarded appliances and furniture, stolen cars and dead animals. It was also a magnet for gunfire and target practice, earning itself the nickname Rambo Rest Stop.

But Perlman said the reputation has changed gradually over time, starting with one community cleanup day.

“A group of people that lived in the area and didn’t even know each other responded to a sign saying, ‘come clean up the refuge,’” Perlman said.

That cleanup day led to a few more and then to grant funding to spruce up trails and install viewing areas. Perlman said the area is popular with bird watchers, dog-walkers and hikers. People come from Anchorage to enjoy the area.

Gradually, she said, things have calmed down and the families have returned to make the short walk to the lake. Her group sponsors twice-yearly family fun days, one in the summer and one in the winter.

This year’s May 1 cleanup day, she said, brought in dozens of volunteers, many from the Palmer Correctional Center. The inmates worked hard and seemed to enjoy the chance to use the trails. They also enjoyed the food.

“They’ll do anything for pizza,” Perlman said of the inmates.

But even with all the help, Perlman said the civilizing of the area has meant there isn’t as much to do when the snow melts.

“We didn’t have a whole lot of cleanup as compared to prior years,” she said.

Which is a good sign. The trends seem to indicate, she said, that when trails are improved and tidied up, people will take their junk elsewhere. Maybe they don’t like messing up a clean trail. Maybe they just realize someone is watching.

But in a lot of ways, old habits die hard. Most of the street signs coming off the highway have bullet holes. Shell casings aren’t hard to find near the lake. A kiosk and interpretive panel her group recently installed was an easy target.

“Within two months it was shot up,” Perlman said. Mat-Su Crime Stoppers is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator.

Still, the bridge paid for with a grant from the Glenn Highway Scenic Byway is a continuation of a trend to make a decent park out of a small spot of nature tucked behind the trees just off of the highway.

Perlman said people enjoy walking around the lake, but, “They don’t like necessarily like having to go out a mile and come back a mile.”

Now they won’t have to.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.