“I recently had the honor of posting the turtle on the first state designated segment of the Wilderness Gateway State Trail,” she announced. 

Hello? I thought with surprise. This is news to me.

As to why I was surprised by this news, a quick explanation is in order. I work for the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, specifically with a unit called Hometown Strong that works with communities in North Carolina’s 78 rural counties to help them achieve their goals. We do this primarily by helping them find funding, typically in the form of grants, but also by helping them make the most of their resources. When those resources are trails, that’s where I come in, by helping communities promote and develop trails. Last year I did this through Year of the Trail, this year I’m working to promote North Carolina’s 14 State Trails. I’m doing that largely through guided events on each trail.

The challenge is that while some trails are complete or nearly so, some exist only on paper. The Wilderness Gateway State Trail, which dates back to 2018, is one of those on-paper-only trails. Or so I thought.

On paper, Wilderness Gateway will one day include 350 miles of trail linking the Hickory Nut Gorge area with South Mountains State Park, Bob’s Creek Natural Area, Morganton and several smaller towns to the east, including Valdese. Each of the State Trails, while part of the NC Division of Parks and Recreation, are administered by a partner agency, usually a local nonprofit. In the case of Wilderness Gateway, that non-profit is the Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina, which is working feverishly to both define the trail and get it off the ground — and on it. In my last correspondence with Foothills, in late Spring, the trail was still conceptual. Now, the first 2 miles, in Valdese Lakeside Park, have been officially designated. I was both pleased to hear this and bummed that I didn’t know earlier: If I’m trying to promote the 14 State Trails, I should have been on top of it. 

I’m vowing now to fix that. 

Another quick sidebar: Within the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, these trails are overseen by the NC State Trails Program, an exceptionally dedicated (and understaffed) crew tasked with creating this 3,400-mile network, about 1,000 miles of which has been officially designated. I don’t have time here to get into how much is involved with building what may seem like a “simple” trail; “simple” trails are not. Nor has it been easy to 

One of the few tasks they are not charged with is publicizing trail when it comes on line; that’s generally left to the partner agencies and the communities, like Valdese, that contribute trail to larger network. In fact, State Trails often piggyback on trail created by local entities. The Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the best-known of the 14 State Trails, piggybacks on local trail frequently on its 1,100-mile march across North Carolina. 

When new trail is added to the MST, you find out about it on the Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail website. Most of the State Trails don’t have the resources to update you immediately on new additions, especially additions they weren’t directly involved with.

Wouldn’t it be great, you’re thinking, to have one location where you can find out about new additions to the State Trails network, a central location that’s easy to find and that not only has these updates, but general information on the trails as well?

That’s how I’m vowing to stay on top of developments on the trail system I’m trying to promote. Our State Trails page vows to stay on top of these developments, to let you know when and where new adventure options become available. One a week we all update the page, either with a detailed description of the new option or with a link to where you can quickly find that information.

We start right now, with the inaugural 2 miles of the Wilderness Gateway State Trail in Valdese:

Wilderness Gateway State Trail / Valdese Greenway

Where: Two trailheads: Valdese Lakeside Park, 1149 Lake Rhodhiss Drive NE, Valdese; McGalliard Falls Park, 1400 Falls Road, Valdese.

Distance: 2 miles

Difficulty: Easy, a relatively flat hike along Lake Rhodhiss and McGalliard Creek.

Surface: Crushed cinder

Added incentive: There’s an additional 4.2 miles of multiuser trail in Valdese Lakeside Park.

Find a map here

We will update this page every Friday with the goal of helping you get out and explore North Carolina’s 14 State Trails!

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Our State Trails page

Follow developments on North Carolina’s State Trails at our “Discover North Carolina’s State Trails Page,” here.

The post Keep up with the latest additions to North Carolina’s 14 State Trails appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

It was a sentiment echoed numerous times by participants in the opening session of the first Great Trails State Conference last week in Winston-Salem: We need trails.

Last week’s inaugural conference was an outgrowth of sorts from 2023’s popular Year of The Trail, a celebration of trails authorized by the North Carolina General Assembly and backed with a $29.15 million investment in trails. The sponsoring Great Trails State Coalition (co-sponsored, actually, with the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources*) was eager to see how much lingering support there was for trails in the state. They were hoping to attract 300 attendees; they had to cap attendance at 378.

The three-day conference was full of revealing moments, such as the one delivered by Mr. Pulley. Among them:

• 100 new miles of trail have been officially added to North Carolina’s 14 State Trails. By “official,” that means they have received “official” designation, ticking off all boxes to qualify as a State Trail. As a whole, 3,400 miles of State Trail are envisioned in North Carolina, about 1,000 miles of which have been officially designated. 
• The Roanoke River State Trail became the first State Trail to be declared officially complete. The paddle trail runs for 140 miles through the coastal plain and includes 16 camping platforms.
• There are four trail collections in the state. The one most of us are familiar with is the Carolina Thread Trail, currently encompassing more than 300 miles of trail and 170 miles of blueways in 15 counties in the Charlotte area. There is also the Piedmont Legacy Trails (550 miles of trail and 250 miles of blueways in the Triad region), Triangle Trails Initiative (trails in 15 counties in the Triangle region), and the Hellbender WNC Trail Network (linking multiuse trail in western North Carolina; about 18 miles are complete).
• The outdoor industry in North Carolina contributes $14.6 billion to the economy, exceeding Colorado’s $13.9 billion outdoor rec economy.
• Outdoor recreation accounts for about 146,00 jobs statewide.
• North Carolina’s Equine State Trail was approved as a State Trail in 2023 and is currently in the planning stages. The trail will travel through eight North Carolina counties: Chatham, Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore and Richmond.
• For years, there’s been talk of a rail trail through Person County that would nearly link the American Tobacco Trail’s northern terminus in downtown Durham with the Virginia line. And for years, the Norfolk Southern Railway has balked at letting go of the line. However, it was revealed in a session on rails-to-trails projects that the railroad’s stance may be softening (the trail would become part of the East Coast Greenway, the North Carolina portion of which is a State Trail).
• The NC Paddle Trails Association, which disappeared in the early 2000s, is back! At the time it was the best source of information for paddling east of I-95.

There was more, which we will cover in the coming months. Suffice it to say that if you worried that Year of the Trail was a passing fancy, it wasn’t. The General Assembly followed its Year of the Trail investment with allocations of $25 million for both 2024 and 2025. The next goal of the Great Trails State Coalition: secure recurring funding for trails in the state.

And in case you wondered what Forrest Pulley and the folks in Allegheny County have in mind, it’s a 25-mile loop trail that would begin and end in Sparta and include a stretch of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Here’s hoping that’s a hike we can do in the not-too-distance future.

* The author employed by the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, as a Rural Advisor in the department’s Hometown Strong rural initiative.

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Great Trails State Coalition

For more on the Great Trails State Coalition and its efforts to grow trail in North Carolina, go here.

The Coalition also has a calendar of trail events being held statewide. Find it here.

The post Great Trails State continues Year of the Trail momentum appeared first on GetGoing NC!.