When people move to the Sierra foothills, a common expectation is that finally they will be able to walk out their front door and go for a hike.

Quickly they discover that they can’t, like Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music,” wander freely across the verdant hillsides - because there’s barbed wire in their way. And even in most of Amador County’s picturesque little towns, there’s a dearth of sidewalks.

“The biggest frustration here is the amount of private property,” said Bill Tanner, owner of Jackson Family Sports. He said he constantly fields questions from people who stop by his shop, asking for maps or guides to hiking trails in the area.

“It’s a big frustration for me to say there really aren’t any,” Tanner said. He does mention to people that they can hike around Tabeaud Lake or on the mile or mile-and-a-half worth of trails in Indian Grinding Rocks State Park. The south shore of Lake Camanche has a 15- to 20-mile trail through scattered oaks, he said, and Campo Seco has a 15-mile round-trip trail.

Other than that, Tanner suggests people walk on some of the little-used backroads. “Landowners I have talked to really don’t have much interest in developing recreation,” he said. “And I can see why - there’s a certain amount of liability.” Also, most recreation departments have little money to spend to buy land or rights-of-way for the creation of new trails.

Tanner said he has been in business in Jackson for nearly 20 years and defines himself as “not anti-growth but, if we do have growth, I would like to have it thought out pretty nicely and have it bring in stuff for the community.”

When the sponsors of Gold Rush Ranch and Golf Resort started putting together a project to bring a golf course, a resort and housing to Sutter Creek, they took an unusual step: they held forums to ask residents of the town what amenities the development could provide for the larger community.

One of the first items on the list was hiking and biking trails that would be open to the public.

As a consequence, more than 5 miles worth of public trails are planned for the development, which is proposed on the 833-acre Noble Ranch and adjoining the 112-acre Allen Ranch, both located northwest of the intersection of Highway 88 and Ridge Road.

The spectacular setting will be a rare treat for Amador County hikers, bikers, birdwatchers and nature lovers.

Troy Claveran of T.D. Claveran Golf Design, one of the sponsors, took me out to visit the site recently and if I hadn’t seen either of the ranch houses or the herd of cattle that is overwintered there, I could easily have imagined that I could still hear the voices of the small band of Miwok Indians who spent part of each year there many years ago. Very little of the ranch is visible from Ridge Road, so the pristine, pre-Gold Rush appearance of much of the site catches new visitors by surprise. Dirt and gravel roads wander throughout the ranch and there are the two ranch houses, which will be removed. Without those modern clues, however, the land itself feels undisturbed by the past century and a half.

Interpretive monuments are planned for three sites: the place where mortar holes show that Indians once congregated, at the mouth of a long-abandoned gold mine and near the remnants of an old dam, built to capture mine tailings.

A mile-long ridge at the 1,200-foot elevation provides triumphant views that sweep from Mount Diablo to Altamount Pass to downtown Sacramento. Elevations on the property range from about 800 feet above sea level to about 1,500 feet.

This trail will bring the Sierra foothill ecosystem within easy access of your tennis shoes, your hiking boots, or your bicycle. The lay of the land and the topographical diversity of the property are rich and inviting and it won’t take visitors long to feel like they’re in a remote, secluded, high-quality locale that has been carefully preserved, despite development of parts of the property.

RosaLee Pryor Escamilla, mayor of Jackson, who serves as board chair of the county’s Recreation Agency and on the Amador County Transportation Commission’s ad hoc committee for pedestrian and bike trails, noted that the rising demand for places to hike or bike is becoming “pretty much a universal cry.”

Escamilla said she was recently talking with a mother of young children, who moved to Sutter Creek from the Bay Area. “She and other mothers are so frustrated that there’s no place to take their kids to ride their bikes and no trails to just go walking on.”

It’s a recurring theme, she said, adding, “Runners and serious cyclists make do, but it’s not ideal for anyone.

“It’s a burning issue with most of the public,” she said. “And that’s relatively recent.” When she first moved to Amador County in 1987, she said she didn’t realize that the issue of trails would become one of her crusades. “It really has become a visible hot issue,” she said, “because enough people here realize the need.”

Escamilla said she is impressed with the project as proposed and with the amount of open space and the trail network. She also was pleased that the Gold Rush Ranch and Golf Resort planners sought input on community recreation needs from the Amador County Recreation Agency. “They actually inquired of us and asked us to make comments on those needs,” she said.

“There’s an increasing passion and interest in creating trails and trail networks and ways to get from one small town to the next without having to risk our lives on the inadequate shoulders of the highways,” she said.

Judie Marks, a freelance writer living in Sutter Creek, was asked by Gold Rush Ranch and Golf Resort to write about issues affecting their proposed project.