By Robin Hunt
Members from Emery, Carbon and Sanpete counties gathered for the first time on Wednesday in Castle Dale to collaborate regarding trails in the tri-county areas. Representatives from each county shared their hopes and plans for the area, as well as the challenges and road blocks they have faced.
Those in attendance set goals for trail maintenance and trail building that would benefit all three counties and offer more trails for multiple types of recreation, such as mountain biking, climbing, equine, etc.
“We had an amazing turnout and a great group of invested trails supporters,” said Tina Henrie, Carbon County Tourism Specialist. “We were able to discuss connecting trails between not only the three counties, but connecting state parks as well as combined marketing efforts. It was a great opportunity to network and come up with a couple of takeaways from the group that we have committed to working on together. The first one being support letters for a Rails to Trails project.”
After the initial conversation, there were a number of breakout sessions with video segments from the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation. Topics revolved around grant opportunities, raising awareness on protecting Utah’s cultural heritage and more.
The three counties plan to meet more frequently in order to put these plans into action.
“This truly kicked off something that has been needed for a long time and that is conversation between the three counties on how we can better serve our visitors in a combined effort, how we can work on overcoming obstacles each of us may have with trail development, funding, as well as community support,” Henrie concluded. “I am hopeful that this will turn into an annual event, if not a quarterly one.”