The not-so secret shortcut off Airport Road that many take for local trips or to get to various athletic facilities northwest of the N.M. 599 frontage road has been reopened, but county officials say the hundreds of motorists who use it may be trespassing on private property.

And technically they are, according the property owner Paul Parker of Los Alamos. However, he says, "I'm not making a big fuss over it. I don't want everybody mad at me."

The Spanglish-named road, Paseo de River, was blocked recently for about two weeks for construction crews to lay water pipes for the Santa Fe city-county Buckman water-diversion project. The south end of the frontage road just beyond the county public works complex, and to the north of that, Paseo de River, were reopened last week.

However, county spokesman Stephen Ulibarri noted that the state Transportation Department still posts a barricade and a dead-end sign at the end of the frontage road to warn motorists that is as far as they can go.

But over the years, motorists in both directions have ignored the barricade and created well-worn paths on both sides of it, leading them southwest to Paseo de River or north to the frontage road.

"It's grown from nothing to a superhighway," Parker said.

The route becomes a dirt road and takes a hilly and bumpy turn through the Santa Fe River bed. In doing so, it cuts a 250- to 300- foot swath through Parker's 6 acres.

The river is just south of the Associated Asphalt company's concrete and gravel operation.

"Motorists go around the barricades to use this route as a shortcut and are probably trespassing on private property," Ulibarri said. "Paseo de River is private road and no governmental agency maintains it."

Traveling south along the frontage road after dipping through the riverbed, the road passes by several businesses including Sub Surface Contracting, which makes rainwater-containment systems, and Diamond K construction. It continues as a short asphalt route to the Maloof beer distributing plant and the moving and storage company. Paseo de River turns right for about two city blocks to Colony Drive, another private road. Turning left on Colony, the motorist connects with Paseo Rael, an extension of Airport Road.

County rights and easements maps indicate that when southbound motorists cross from the frontage road around the barricade through the riverbed and onto Paseo de River, they cut through property owned by Parker and his wife, Mary Jo.

The Parkers own Parker Construction Co. based in Los Alamos. Officials said there are no records indicating that the Parkers ever granted right of way through their land.

"(The county) believes that people are trespassing through the Parker property onto the New Mexico 599," Ulibarri said.

Donald Coleman, who lives off Caja del Rio not far from the Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe, travels Paseo de River to get to El Rancho del las Golondrinas at 334 Los Pinos Road, where he works as a volunteer.

Coleman, a retired computer systems analyst form Sonora, Calif., said the shortcut saves him several miles because he doesn't have to backtrack up the frontage road to County Road 62 to connect with southbound N.M. 599.

The route has "always been used a lot by the locals," said Coleman, who has lived in the area for about three years. "There is always a steady stream of traffic."

Parker, standing on the elevated edge of the riverbed, confirmed that he never gave a right of way through the property for a roadway, but recently did grant an easement for the laying of water pipes for the city-county Buckman diversion project, and previously allowed the county to construct river-containment features.

Parker suspects nearby businesses, several of which deal in asphalt and gravel, paved over the swath through his property, making it an easier ride from the riverbed to the frontage road. He noted that county trucks also use the route to and from the county's public works complex.

Parker says he has no plans to close the path through his land, but eventually expects to build a construction yard on the property.

What the county or state or whoever has jurisdiction should do, Parker said, is construct a bridge from the frontage road over his land and the river toward Paseo Real (the western extension of Airport Road). That road could be used by local traffic as well as those headed toward the golf course and athletic fields on Caja del Rio Road.