City shocks Trail Association with grant match

Sep. 14—The Tahlequah City Council recently approved the total amount needed to match a grant given to Tahlequah Trails Association by Tahlequah Community Fund.

The funds are earmarked to hire professional trail builders to complete another 2-1/2 miles at Welling Ridge Trails. TTA is developing shared-used, hiking and biking trails on a 200-acre property on Welling Ridge.

"We are very pleased with the support of the council," said Mike Bingham, president of the board, after the meeting.

Michael Lynn, TTA board member, expressed shocked and said it was totally unexpected that the council agreed to set aside the entire amount to match the grant.

"We will continue as a board to seek out the additional funds. We don't want the city to come up with all that if they don't have to, but it is huge safety net for us," he said.

Lynn, who serves as construction leader on the TTA board, is head of the road department for Cherokee Nation. The tribe has also stepped up to help build the trails. Some non-monetary items included an environmental study, said Bingham.

The concept plan has a lot of Geographic Information System data, Bingham added.

"In the concept plan, approximately 10 miles of trails are mapped out," said Bingham. "We've [constructed] the first four miles. The other six miles are mapped as far as the topo map, but we still have to hire somebody to do a 'ground truth' on that GIS data."

Doing a 'ground truth' entails walking the property with the map to ensure there isn't a precipice or unusual obstacle the trail has to bypass.

"They are then going to flag where the newer trail will go," said Bingham.

This effort was funded by a matching grant from IMBA, which provided a master plan for the property.

"They came on site and trained us in beginner trail building. That's when we started our volunteer efforts with building the first several miles of green trails," said Jill Herrlein, secretary/treasurer of TTA.

Rogue Trails, based out of Arkansas, completed the most recent portion of the trails.

Local grants helped TTA with the matching funds. TTA incorporated in 2019 and began actual construction on fencing the acre for the parking lot in early 2020. IMBA came on site in early 2020 and trained volunteers, developed the concept plan, and helped complete approximately four miles of the "ground truth."

The address of the entrance to the Welling Ridge Trail is 19679 S. 550 Road.

"Tahlequah Trails Association is the name of the 501©3, and the property is known as Welling Ridge Trails," said Herrlein. "We may, in the future, develop somewhere else."

Within Welling Ridge Trails are several different paths. On the website www.tahlequahtrails.org is a map of the existing and proposed trails.

"[Completed trails] are Big Brother, Little Brother, and Wildfire," said Herrlein. "These are soft surface trails."

In conjunction with the trail building, under the direction of Herrlein, TTA adopted three miles of road leading up to the trail, using groups of volunteers on a regular basis to clean up litter.

"[We've adopted] part of Welling Road and [part of] 550 Road," said Herrlein.

On Sept. 9, a scheduled clean up of that area involved Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity and the TTA group and families.

"Last spring, we actually started working with TTA, and we did a service event with them," said Kinley Wilson, member of TKE. "Mike reached out to me and asked if we wanted to do a trail event [today] and I said we would love to."

Stetson Dilbeck, a member of TKE, worked with several new TKE members on their first service event since returning from summer break.

"It's just a really cool way of showing what our fraternity is about — giving back and being part of the community," said Dilbeck.

The youngest member of TKE, Ethan Keys, was shocked at how much trash had been thrown out along the road.

"When you're driving, you don't see how much there actually is," said Keys. "We found a lot of beer cans and pop cans."

Payden Kilgor, a member of TKE, believes it is just common sense not to throw trash on the roadsides.

The Donohue family lives in Tulsa and came out to support the clean up event, and take advantage of the opportunity to utilize the trails.

"We live in Tulsa, and we came originally when they first started making the trail and Mike [Bingham] is good friends with my parents," said Elias Donohue.

His brothers Samuel and James and sister Lucy also joined in the event.

The volunteer spirit is what has touched him the most, said Bingham.

Herrlein explained how the road adoption fit in with the building of the trail system. The group picks up litter every second month, second week of each quarter.

"This is a county-sponsored initiative, Adopt a Road, with the Trash Coalition," said Herrlein. "They are trying to get organizations and individuals to adopt the road."

With a trail counting system, TTA can track how many hikers and bikers are using the trails, counting them as they enter and exit the trails.

"Now we can see the fruit of [our work]. The numbers [of visitors] are growing," said Bingham.

Abby Harsley, her boyfriend Giovanny Lara, and Abby's mother, Tricia Harsley, traveled from Tulsa to enjoy Tahlequah and brought Piper, their poodle. They found the Welling Ridge Trails on AllTrails, a hiking app.

"It is way better than we anticipated, and has a really great entrance and the [trails were marked well]," said Abby Harsley.

A couple from Poteau, Kevin Repass and Valerie Repass, who mountain bike on trails in several towns, tried the Welling Ridge Trails for the first time, and found them to be some of the best they have experienced, said Kevin.