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Do it your self
Community should line up private resources to develop Prizery-Berry Hill
hike, trail organization says
By TOM McLAUGHLIN
News & Record Staff
The question among audience members at Thursday’s night public
information session on the Tobacco Heritage Trail was plain: When will
the project become a reality in Halifax County?
The answer, according to those who have worked most closely to make the
hiking, biking and riding trail a reality in Southside Virginia, could
come down to whether the community is willing to step up and build
portions of the trail itself.
The gap between planning and action was brought out in an exchange
between Chris Jones, executive director of The Prizery, and Sandra
Tanner, a councilwoman for the town of La Crosse in Mecklenburg County
and president of Roanoke River Rails to Trails, Inc.
Following a Powerpoint presentation that detailed progress that has
been made on the trail in eastern Mecklenburg and Brunswick counties,
Jones asked when residents of Halifax County might expect work on the
trail to begin here locally.
Tanner, a tourism specialist with the Virginia Tourism Corporation,
said she understood Halifax’s desire to speed along a project that
speakers emphasized could take 10 to 15 years to develop. And she
agreed with Jones’ suggestion that existing plans for a 2.4 mile trail
section from The Prizery to Berry Hill Plantation would get a
jump-start if members of the community undertook the project
themselves.
Roanoke River Rails to Trails is set to acquire the right-of-way for
The Prizery trail section on Dec. 18. “Once we have signed on the
dotted line … then the community can come to Roanoke River Rails to
Trails and say ‘we’re going to do this, we’re going to build this,’
come to us,” urged Tanner.
If the trail’s location “is not considered controversial and people
want to see it become a reality, it can,” added Halifax Town Manager
Carl Espy, who serves as vice-president of the organization. “The
community can guide that destiny.”
Planning for the trail takes time, money and public support, trail
advocates said. Building up the latter was one of the reasons cited for
the informational meeting at The Prizery, one of three such gatherings
sponsored by the trails organization last week. The other two took
place in Alberta and Boydton.
As envisioned, the Tobacco Heritage Trail will be a 160-mile network of
walking and riding paths crisscrossing five counties: Halifax,
Mecklenburg, Charlotte, Brunswick and Lunenburg. The Tobacco Heritage
Trail also will link with trails in other parts of Virginia as well as
the proposed East Coast Greenway, reaching from Maine to Florida.
Tanner described the Tobacco Heritage Trail as a “linear park” that
would provide residents and visitors with a safe place to walk, jog,
pedal or horseback ride amid the rural beauty of Southside Virginia. By
opening up the countryside to pedestrians and outdoor enthusiasts,
Southside can improve the quality of life for local residents and
create a money-making tourist attraction all at the same time, she
said.
Tanner cited the examples of the Virginia Creeper Trail and the New
River Trail in southwest Virginia to argue that the Tobacco Heritage
Trail could boost the local economy.
Hikers and bicyclists are visiting Southwest Virginia in increased
numbers and “leaving their money and going back home,” without putting
pressure on localities to provide services, said Tanner. “And don’t we
all love that?”
The trails also attract their own constituencies which monitor safety
and the environment and prevent abuses, she added.
In her hometown of La Crosse, Tanner said, where a short section of
trail is already open, adjoining residents report fewer problems with
people riding ATVs by their property. Motorized vehicles that once
rumbled over the rough paths behind people’s home have been pushed out
by the trail, which does not allow motorized vehicles.
“Since the trail has opened up that [ATV riding] no longer happens
because we’ve got people out there who are policing the trail,” said
Tanner.
Rather than detracting from property values — a common fear among
adjoining landowners — the trail has enhanced the value of homes, farms
and businesses in its path, said Tanner. “It’s been proven in other
areas where if you go to sell property [next to the trail] it increases
in value because people want to be there,” she said.
The Tobacco Heritage Trail has given her hometown of La Crosse the
chance to “reinvent” itself, Tanner said.
“When the railroad was there the town was booming … When the railroad
went away, the town did, too.”
Across Southside, the trail promises to reconnect to the history of
many small communities that dried up with the passing of the railroad
era — in almost-forgotten places with names such as High Plains and
Union Level, Fort Christanna and Jeffress, Elm Hill and Denniston.
John Schmidt, a landscape architect with Land Planning and Design
Associates, Inc., said planning staff with the firm have been out in
the field, walking and touring the proposed trail to discover what
links can be established with Southside’s heritage.
The eventual scope of the project will depend largely on the ability of
Roanoke River Rails to Trails to purchase right-of-way from the
railroad companies that still own abandoned lines across Southside
Virginia. Where right-of-way isn’t available or where private land
owners balk at the prospect of the trail, Roanoke River Rails to Trails
will route the project to follow existing back roads and highways.
Offering one example, Schmidt spoke of the challenge of developing a
pedestrian crossing on the U.S. 58-Business bridge in Clarksville over
Buggs Island Lake. Highway bridges may have to be used to span other
creeks and rivers in Southside, he said..
It may be possible in other areas to rehabilitate long-abandoned
bridges to maintain the off-road character of the trail, but the cost
will be steep, Schmidt said. Converting clear, open spaces into
developed trail costs around $100,000 per mile, but doing the same over
creeks and rivers can cost up $500,000 per mile, he said.
Funding for the trail project has come primarily in the form of federal
transportation enhancement grants — commonly known as TEA-21 grants —
as well as from the state of Virginia, the Virginia Tobacco Commission
and the USDA Rural Development program. In addition to paying for
planning and design of the project, the money has been set aside to
upgrade two small portions of trail — a four-mile stretch between La
Crosse and Brodnax on the Mecklenburg-Brunswick line and another
segment in the Lawrenceville area.
In Halifax County, planning is furthest along for the Prizery-to-Berry
Hill segment and for another stretch from Clarkton Bridge to Red Hill,
birthplace of Patrick Henry outside of Brookneal. The Prizery trail
would snake across land owned by the South Boston Industrial
Development Authority along the Dan River, backing up to Berry Hill.
But Roanoke River Rails to Trails currently has no money available to
build either project, speakers said.
Jones, who noted that The Prizery’s first grant award was for
converting the building into a waystation for hikers and bikers,
suggested that Roanoke River Rails to Trails should reach out to
contractors, builders, private individuals, community groups and anyone
else who could pull together the materials, manpower and other
resources to build trail section quickly and inexpensively.
Tanner endorsed the idea, provided the segment is built to the same
standards as the rest of the trail. Roanoke River Rails to Trails can
provide liability coverage, she said.
Schmidt said private funding and construction might help Roanoke River
Rails to Trails avoid some of the red tape and paperwork that comes
with public funding, but he cautioned that privately-built projects can
be difficult for localities to pull off.
“Not many people have the ability to build projects with private
funding, which is why people all around the state are applying for
federal funding,” Schmidt said.
Roanoke River Rails to Trails is submitting a transportation
enhancement grant request for around $425,000 to pay for construction
of the Berry Hill-Prizery segment, said Espy. But if the community
wants to move forward with building a usable trail, it can go ahead and
do so, and Roanoke River Rails to Trail will use grant proceeds later
on to bring the segment to federal standards.
Espy said that’s how the La Crosse and Lawrenceville trail segments
have proceeded, with user groups taking on the initial task of
construction and Roanoke River Rails to Trails following in their
footsteps with grant funds to improve the projects. The key, Espy said,
is to develop a usable trail, then build support as people understand
what an asset it can be to a community.
“We’d like to get [a trail] to a usable standard now from Berry Hill to
The Prizery … and then when that enhancement funding comes available,
model it just as they did with the Brodnax and La Crosse section,” said
Espy.