HOUGHTON — Closed since the Father’s Day Flood five years ago, the Department of Natural Resources snowmobile trail is scheduled to be open by the start of December.

Only some minor work remains on the project, which spans about seven miles, said Ron Yesney, Upper Peninsula trails coordinator for the DNR. It included 186 repair sites, and 102 culverts that were either repaired or removed, Yesney said.

“Mostly we’re just excited for the community and the businesses to have that community resource available again,” Yesney said. “I’m grateful for all the assistance that we got from all the Keweenaw ATV club and the Keweenaw Trail Services, as well as our legislators that pushed the project forward.”

The project cost is estimated at around $10.5 million so far, he said. That includes about $2.5 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funding along with other state and federal grants.

Part of the project involved restoration work to remove the culverts and the grade the DNR wasn’t using, which otherwise could have posed a safety risk to homeowners in communities downstream, Yesney said. Crews also repaired the state-owned grade and updated it with modern culvert crossings that meet the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy requirements.

The trail route has slightly changed. The state owns several grades on the hillside, and shifted the trail away from land on the previous route owned by TRG, Yesney said.

“There’s only one small segment we couldn’t shift that’s privately owned, about 900 feet of the seven miles,” he said.

The DNR is working with the land owner on some sort of acquisition, Yesney said.

Work is also continuing on other DNR trails damaged in the 2018 flood. The Houghton-to-Chassell trail is substantially complete, with one culvert yet to be finished, Yesney said. That will be completed in the spring.

Flood damage on the Bill Nicholls Trail has also been repaired. Additional work is being done on an unrelated project with Adams Township, whose water mains lie above the DNR’s culverts.

“They’re going to replace the water main, and we’re going to try to replace the culverts at the same time,” he said.

Work on the Freda grade is in the engineering and analysis phase, Yesney said.

“We had that on hold until the Lake Linden project was complete,” he said.

Yesney is glad to see the Lake Linden project nearing completion. The large-scale project was split over six separate bid packages.

“This is the biggest construction project we’ve done, the trail sections done all at once,” he said. “It’s just good to see it come to fruition.”