“Joining communities through fitness, recreation, heritage and transportation networks”
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Neon Green with Black Printing
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People said, 'Build this [Eliza Furnace] Trail and no one will come' …Now commuters use it every day and families come on weekends to blade and bike and walk.
Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I have hope for the human race. Too often, the advocates of trails and linear parks along rights-of-way come up against officials who recognize only one kind of park–the squared-off kind that comes in chunks; and one kind of recreation–the supervised kind known as ‘organized sweating.’ Such officials refuse to acknowledge that there has been a change in US recreation trends, reflected in the phenomenal growth of hiking, biking, and horseback riding… As a kid I had a dream–I wanted to own my own bicycle. When I got the bike I must have been the happiest boy in Liverpool, maybe the world. I lived for that bike. The proposed Ohio River Trail, when completed will enhance and further develop recreational opportunities for the communities along the Ohio River Trail corridors as well as the region, by linking existing and proposed pedestrian, bicycle, recreation, open space, and transportation facilities while protecting environmental and cultural resources and improving public access to the river’s edge. One of the major outcomes of the project will be to foster further recreation and cultural-based economic development within the local communities and the region, capitalizing on the synergy of ecotourism and the potential development of a larger recreation and parks system as a way to reposition all the evolved communities for the 21st century business and lifestyle needs. The forgotten outdoorsmen of today are those who like to walk, hike, ride horseback, or bicycle. For them we must have trails as well as highways… I am requesting therefore, that the Secretary of the Interior work with his colleagues in the federal government and with state and local leaders and recommend to me a cooperative program to encourage a national system of trails, building up the more than [one] hundred thousand miles of trails in our National Forests and Parks... In the backcountry we need to copy the great Appalachian Trail in all parts of our country.
