photo by: Nick Henthorn

WV TRAIL Executive Director Sam England, pictured giving a presentation Wednesday to those gathered inside the White Palace in Wheeling Park. England spoke about the need for a new statewide trail plan and the challenges facing trail development in the Mountain State.

WHEELING — Wednesday evening inside the White Palace in Wheeling Park, WV TRAIL continued their hike through the Mountain State for their sixth of 10 stops around West Virginia.

WV Trails & Recreation Advocacy & Information Link, or TRAIL, an organization which advocates for increased awareness and development of non-motorized trails in W.Va., is making the rounds through the state, sharing their statewide trails plan and gathering support for greater investment in trail construction. On Wednesday, the organization took to the White Palace to bring their vision to trail enthusiasts around Wheeling.

“Our focus is trails, but our main focus is the economic and community development that trails bring,” Sam England, the Executive Director for WV TRAIL, said before giving his presentation Wednesday. “Part of the thing that we do is to try to educate people and state leadership about the importance of non-motorized trails. These meetings are designed to help us put together a renewed statewide trail plan. That may sound boring, but it’s important for us in understanding where funding goes through, what policy needs that the state has, and the directions that trails, non-motorized trails specifically, need to take.

“And as a part of that, we could have written grants to make this work, figure it out, but we felt it was more important that we go out to the community and find out what the community says that a trail plan should have.”

During his presentation, England noted that it had been 20 years since the last time W.Va. had formulated a statewide trail plan.

WV TRAIL, though not a trail-building organization, is aiming to plot out a new plan, and determine pricing, while traveling around the state and building support for their trail plan, which involves 430 miles of interconnected trails through the state.

“We believe that a new trail plan doesn’t need to be be a government document, but more about something that’s useful, actionable, and a resource that can be used, not only for trail planning, but to give to planners that are in an area and different groups that are trying to make their trail a reality or try to maintain their trails. We want to affect policy in West Virginia related to management and funding for trails.”

As part of their mission, England and WV TRAIL are making 10 stops around West Virginia, to be followed by a virtual meeting.

“This is number six [of 10],” England said. “And so far we’ve had about, up to this point, about 200 people at five different locations. Last night we were in Parkersburg and tonight we’re here and tomorrow I’ll be in Fayetteville. So we are traveling around the state quite a bit. Then we have an 11th one, which is a virtual conference. The idea here is that the meetings, they’re in the evenings because people that do trails are either retired or they work another job and they work on trails and their emphasis is trails in their off time.

“The virtual one will be during the day so that we can try to incorporate agencies and groups and they can participate.”

England has been encouraged by the people he has met through his recent travels.

“What’s really important here is that every meeting that we’ve had has been great energy,” England said. “You look around the room and you see like-minded people having conversations about trails and then through the meeting we have a lot of engagement and a lot of energy and because people are passionate about it.

“The issue is that there’s no common group that can bring a common or unified message to state leadership about non-motorized trails. And that they’re almost invisible when it comes to that. State leadership will tell you, hey, yeah, we love trails, but there’s no funding. Every one of our surrounding states has funding. West Virginia doesn’t. The only thing we have is pass-through dollars.”

WV TRAIL focuses on the economic, health and community benefits of a more developed trail system, but also point out where they find West Virginia lacking, noting that there is no state investment in trail construction, only federal funding through Recreational Trail Programs (RTP) and Transportation Alternatives (TA).

“Trails matter. Trails are important. There is a community in trails,” England said. “Trails need funding and they need attention. And right now, everybody in this room will tell you the primary challenge that they have is funding. And all we’re saying is that it’s an investment, not just simply– “We’re paying this out for these folks that may walk two miles.” It is an investment into the state for the economic development and the community benefits that come along with it. The physical and mental health, bringing people to an area, they’re coming because of the livability of a community and they’re looking for outdoor recreation, primarily trails.”

For more information about WV TRAIL, visit wvtrail.org.