Easement

I work as a volunteer for a trail organization. The trail traverses many towns and the organization wanted to compile a map of the trail location. In my town, many of the properties traversed by the trail have included easements for hiking on this trail. I presented my map and research to the trail organization compiled from research of the courthouse record.
 
One owner of land, which granted an easement in their deed, recently transferred ownership to another. The new owner attended a meeting to object to the trail being on her land. Members of the trail organization feel that moving the trail would appease the owner and keep everyone happy. I am not against happiness. However, I think the trail organization needs to extinguish the current easement.
 
Besides this, I think that general confusion will result if the trail keeps moving about. In fact, some landowners who have granted verbal permission without easement have objected to the trail organization constantly moving the trail.
 
My question is what are the steps the trail organization should take to maintain a correct description of the trail location? The recorded information will show the trail in the current location whether the organization moves it or not.
 
My feeling is that an attorney must be involved to extinguish the easement and a surveyor should prepare a new map. Am I correct?
 
   

If the trail organization wants to appease the property owner and move the trail off of her land, I agree that the easement should be extinguished, but I'm not sure an attorney would be necessary, unless that's required in your area for some reason.  Wouldn't a quitclaim deed from the grantee (trail organization?) be sufficient?  Then I would think a new easement should be obtained from the owner where the trail is being relocated and the map revised to show the new easement location.  Is it more complicated than that for a reason I'm not seeing?

I don't understand the politics that makes the trail association want to roll over and move the trail.  The lady bought the land with the recorded easement and active trail in place.  How can she expect/force them to give it up?

We talked about this on the old board.

Here's what we ended up with:

Agreement to Release and Extinguish Easement

I'll record my survey on Tuesday.

Radar

Paul - I'm not sure if this type of easement release is just specific to Oregon, but the two examples I'll try to attach may help. They're pretty simple. Round these parts, If a right of way were dedicated to the public, then the governing body (city, county) would have to vacate it which is a lot more involved.

"as shone" ??   Someone could use illumination concerning their spelling.

A shining example Mike... Ha ha.

"as shone on..."  Yeah, that is pretty funny. I just grabbed a couple quick examples from the county's on-line deed records and didn't even notice that.

For that one I had searched for deed examples with grantees of "owners of record" which can be a handy way to release an easement across multiple properties without having to identify the current owner of each lot. I imagine the City of Redmond ran it though a spell check and, of course, the spell check said no errors found. If they were to post them here for review prior to recording they'd never have THAT problem again...