Quechee residents Kate, Anna and Joseph Kebbekus on the Ottauquechee Trail.

What popular amenity is consistently ranked #1 or #2 in preference by homeowners and homebuyers? If you said golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools, clubhouses or water- front locations, go sit in the cloakroom. According to the National Association of Homebuilders, the answer is trails. And the economic benefits of trails accrue not only to individual landowners, but to entire communities as well. In some towns where trails are a central amenity they can attribute up to 45 percent of their regions’ business revenues directly to the attraction of the trails for both visitors and residents. (Thanks to Morton Trails of Thetford, Vermont, for the above information and some of what you’ll find later in this article.)

While these economic potentials of trails may not be broadly recognized as yet, the other reasons for their popu- larity are self-evident. Regular use helps maintain both phys- ical and mental health. Hitting the trail is a disciplined way to keep off those unwanted pounds. Trails let people enjoy the many wonders of the natural world; this may be espe- cially important for kids at a time when many get their view of the great outdoors via a television screen, a computer monitor or some other electronic device. Then there’s the great benefit of connecting various parts of a community…or one community to another…in a way that brings people into closer contact with each other and nurtures their sense of place. And perhaps saves gasoline and wear on the family car.

Trails for Tomorrow

If the Upper Valley in general and Quechee in particular are to have more and better trails in the future, two rel- atively young organizations will have much to do with it. The Upper Valley Trails Alliance (UVTA), founded in 1999, is a coalition of more than a hundred trail and land protection organizations, civic groups and landowners. Its mission is “to enhance communication and coordination among trail advocates, create a cohesive network of inter- connected trails, [and] engage community volunteers in building new trails and maintaining existing ones.” The short-form of its raison d’etre is the slogan used to title this article: Promoting Trails, Connecting Communities. F.O.O.T., or Friends of the Ottauquechee Trail, a mem- ber of the UVTA, is the Quechee-based trail advocacy group started less than ten years ago. Like many civic action groups, F.O.O.T. arose from the recognition of a need that official organizations were not yet ready to focus on. Sheila Armen, who was instrumental in getting F.O.O.T. started, says, “I approached the Town of Hartford in 2002 about planning and designing a walkway down Main Street of Quechee. I got nowhere.”

Armen is passionate about Quechee’s need for connect- ing trails. “There is nothing the town needs more than trails and sidewalks,” she says. Her concept is that people ought to be able to park at one end of the town or the other, or in the middle, and then walk to any place they may want to reach, without having to use the shoulders of roads. At the moment, if you start at the Strong House Spa, the business Armen co-owns with Shelly Yusko, you can walk all the way to the bottom of Quechee Gorge without ever stepping on a roadway except for brief crossings. But to go in the oppo- site direction toward the covered bridge, the Ottauquechee Trail takes you only as far as the cemetery and then you need to walk along the road. Similarly, walking into town from the Quechee Club means using the narrow shoulders of either Main Street or River Street for long stretches. Armen says the cemetery-to-bridge link is near the top of F.O.O.T.’s agenda, with the club-to-town stretch close behind. Though F.O.O.T was born out of some frustration with the Town of Hartford’s then lack of interest in trails, Armen feels that attitudes are changing. She says that the town now is working with F.O.O.T. to secure “village center” designa- tion for Quechee. This program of the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation was created by the legislature “to recognize and encourage local efforts to revitalize Vermont’s traditional village centers.” The program entails tax credits for the restoration of building facades and for amenities such as sidewalks and bike paths.

A Walk By the River

One day in late June, I met John Taylor at the Quechee Gorge Visitor Center to talk about the UVTA, which John Serves as Trail Programs Director. We set off walking on the trail behind the center and soon connected with the main gorge trail, coming across several couples or groups of walk- ers along the way. Turning north, we passed under the Route 4 Bridge and continued along the lip of the Gorge until we came to the head of the Gorge at the Ottauquechee Dam and Waterfall. Continuing north, we found ourselves on a wide, mowed grass trail known as the Quechee Gorge Walk, a 1.7-mile out-and-back trek that starts at the Dewey’s Pond parking area and lies between the pond and the river. At one point a groundhog bolted across the path ahead of us. I asked John whose land we were walking on. He told me that it belongs to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which led to another question: Are private landowners reluctant to allow trails on their properties for concerns about liability?

“That used to be more of a problem,” he said. “But sev- eral years ago Vermont passed a law that protects landown- ers from liability unless they knowingly create a dangerous situation or charge a fee for using the land.” This law came into being in 1998 and makes it clear than a landowner must be guilty of “willful and wanton misconduct” in order to incur liability risk.

We continued across Clubhouse Road until we stood on the Ottauquechee Trail just down from Marshland Farms, on land owned by Quechee Lakes Landowners Association (QLLA). Here John pointed to one of the trail markers he had made with his router on a length of Trex®. “I wasn’t sure it would work,“ he said, explaining that the goal was to cre- ate signage both more natural and more durable than a painted marker. Had we followed the marker west, we would have traveled a track largely hidden from the road by low brush, crossing four small wooden bridges and ending at the cemetery. Marty Banak, owner of Wilderness Trails & Ver- mont Fly Fishing Schools, and Darrek Daoust, owner of Bal- loons of Vermont, play active roles in maintaining this section of the trail, which includes keeping the bridges in shape. (A later walk here proved it to have many ups and downs as well as narrow stretches—not recommended for anyone unsteady on their pins.)

Instead, John and I walked east along a mowed grass path paralleling Clubhouse Road until re-crossing in front of Strong House Spa and entering onto the Polo Field, which also is QLLA property. Here John called my attention to the fact that the grassy track had recently been mowed. “We had hoped,” he said, “that normal usage would have kept the grass worn down. But with all the rain this spring…” His point was that trails don’t maintain themselves and weather conditions have much to say about the amount of work required. Many Upper Valley trails are maintained by public owners (towns, schools, etc.) while other get their care from volunteers belonging to trail advocacy groups. A hundred yards or so farther along, we came to the trail- head of the Ottauquechee Trail at the steel gate leading out onto Dewey’s Mill Road. From there, backtracking our way to the visitor’s center on Route 4, John related some basic information about the UVTA. Dues-paying membership numbers about 400, with some 1500 people having expressed interest in being trail advocates. Dues are $20 for an individual “basic” membership and $25 for a basic orga- nization membership. Several other membership categories range through $75 for a “Trail Partner” to $500 for a “Trail Angel.” (F.O.O.T.’s membership totals about 40 and its $20 dues cover a tee shirt and a pedometer.)

Parting, John gave me a fistful of UVTA literature, including a marvelous 76-page booklet titled, Take Steps Toward a Healthier Life … Go Walking! The middle 50 or so pages provide detailed descriptions of numerous trails avail- able throughout the Upper Valley, including directions on how to get there, parking, permitted uses and the owner- ship/maintenance of the facility. (F.O.O.T.’s contribution to trail literature is a fun coloring and activity book for kids.)

Building Trails, Building Business

It may not occur to many that a viable business could be based on the planning and design of trails. But that’s exactly what John Morton, a two-time Olympian (biathlon) had in mind 20 or so years ago when he founded Morton Trails. Today, his organization is involved in some 130 Trail pro- jects spread from coast-to-coast and beyond, and John Mor- ton is considered the “Robert Trent Jones of trail design.” Of course, there are trails and then there are trails. Hav- ing hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail and Vermont’s own Long Trail, my own image of a trail was that of a narrow track that often disappeared over rocky terrain. That does- n’t mean that these trails weren’t laid out—i.e., planned and designed—in large part with great forethought. Nor that Morton would- n’t be involved with such a trail. But the company’s trail concepts go much beyond that, all the way to the notion of trails as a major amenity—perhaps the major amenity—of a huge planned community. David Lindahl, formerly the UVTA’s treasurer, joined Morton Trails as a partner about four-and-a-half years ago. Dartmouth graduate Lin- dahl, an economic geographer by training, describes a project that shows just how far trails can entwine in the economics of a community. Black Diamond, 30 miles outside of Seattle, is a 6,000-unit development where, he says, “Trails are the defining aspect of the community, putting recre- ation right outside the back door, allowing people to connect without cars, and providing the potential for events.” He asserts that private developers “get a much bigger bang for their buck by building trails rather than golf courses.”

The potential economic benefit of an event trail looms large in Sheila Armen’s mind, too. She says that a good trail system can help make a town a destination for visitors, and that an event trail can bring even more people and business for local merchants. “If we built an event trail here,” she says, “we could have walking, running, snowshoeing, even biathlon events. They could be local, regional, even national.” Wouldn’t an event trail need a lot of space? No, she says, because you can loop a trail around and put it in a surprisingly confined space. But she points out that we do have a very large space in town, QLLA’s Section 5-C, which would be ideal for almost any type of event trail. David Lindahl has several examples of the impact an event trail can have. Close by, there’s Thetford Academy’s five kilometers of trails for running and cross-country skiing. The facility hosts the annual Woods Trail Run for high school and junior high school runners as well as the Vermont State cross-country championships since 1992 and the New England Championships every four years. “The population of the town doubles during the championship events,” Lindahl says. He also notes that hundreds of volunteers turn out, demonstrating a trail’s potential for building community pride.
Volunteers and trails go together like bees and honey. But when it comes to building new trails these days, the notion of a hearty group of volunteers hacking one out with nothing but hand tools tells only part of the story. Sections of the Ottauquechee Trail clearly were done just so, but Morton Trails’ projects, by contrast, often require major pieces of heavy equipment.

Heavy doses of planning also characterize the best of modern trail projects. Trails have typically been reverse-engineered, Lindahl says, using old logging trails or rail beds. But trails in new developments need to be master-planned and the first thing built. “You wouldn’t build a bunch of houses and then call in Jack Nicklaus to design a golf course around them, would you?” Lindahl asks. He doesn’t think trails should be handled that way, either.

This story was first published in The Quechee Times fall 2011.