Bristow celebrates grand opening of Rolling Prairie Bike Trail

It was a blustery, cool morning on Saturday, Oct. 12 as Butler County Conservation Director Mike Miner welcomed commu-nity members and guests to the grand opening and ribbon cut-ting ceremony of the Rolling Prairie Bike Trail at the trail-head in Bristow. The morn-ing’s festivities were in celebra-tion of the completion of the six-mile section of trail from Allison to Bristow, which took 10 years to finish.

The trail, which follows the old railroad tracks in between the towns, is paved asphalt. The hope is that it will give the county a more long-term use and require less maintenance. With the completion of this section, the trail is now fully paved and stretches more than 20 miles across Butler County, from Shell Rock to Bristow.

“On average it is estimated that our bike trail from Shell Rock to here (Bristow) now has about 24,000 users annu-ally,” said Miner. “It’s an at-traction–a tourist attraction, which is kind of neat.”

The Conservation Board promotes the trail at RAG-BRAI in Des Moines every year. They set up a booth and converse with many of the cyclists on the ride.

“It is one of our busiest talking points that we go to. There’s always people wanting to know about the trail,” he said. “They ask us the types of things like, how far it is and how long it is. They want to know how many bars on it; how many campsites are on it. They want to know where they can camp and kayak.”

The trail has seen many cyclists from throughout the state, including riders from Mason City, Cedar Falls, Ce-dar Rapids and Des Moines, to name a few. But it’s not just Iowans who are using it.

“We've had groups all the way up from Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, who use this bike trail,” he said. “The group from Texas/Arkansas brought 500 people here one day. They were riding across several states, but they came to the bike trail, jumped on at Alli-son, stayed at Wilder Park, and then went all the way through to Waverly. So it does bring people from outside the state as well.”

According to Butler Coun-ty Economic Developer Jeff Kolb, the county is getting closer to having calls from all 50 states asking about the trail. Plus there have been cyclists from several countries that have used the trail too.

“A lot of our numbers in-creased on that because of RAGBRAI a couple years ago,” Miner said. “A lot of people jumped on and used it. So we’re excited.”

With the new section of trail officially open–thanks to the many businesses and indi-viduals who gave generous donations–the board hopes to see that number continue to grow. Miner expressed that the fundraising and donations were a big key to the completion of the newest portion of trail, as it cost $1.2 million to build. Signs displaying how many feet of trail each contributor sponsored were set up at the ceremony on Saturday, and he highlighted a few of the top donors, thanking them for their impact.

“I do want to throw some thank yous out there. Every-one along the bike trail con-tributed to get this portion done–Bristow, Dumont, Shell Rock, Allison, Clarksville all donated, so I do want to thank those cities and commu-nities,” he said. “I want to throw out special thanks to Deb Allen, Jay Forey, the 2017 North Butler Cy-Hawk Challenge, Dave and Molly Anderson, Betty Rewerts, Abbas Express, Dumont Tele-phone, and Marty and Julie Brehmer for their donations too.

“Also, a big thank you to the Board of Supervisors. They donated $300,000 to help make it happen. The But-ler County Conservation, all those board members donated $200,000 too. Of the $200,000 the conservation board put up, $75,000 was done by REAP money,” he said. “With those two dona-tions, it allowed us to get the State Trails Grant. We got that for $600,000.”

Along with the funding for the trail itself, Norma Clark and Jeff and Pam Dralle also donat-ed benches that have been placed along the trail. The first bench is near the football field in Allison, the second is near Hickory Avenue, and the other is at the trailhead in Bristow.

The construction of the trailhead was put together by Tyler Hines as part of his Ea-gle Scout project this past year. The concrete and rock was all donated for its con-struction, which was then completed by Hines. In the upcoming year, the conserva-tion board will put up a kiosk on the open concrete pad at the trailhead. They will also add the large Rolling Prairie Trail limestone rock on the smaller pad of concrete, similar to what is already in place in Allison.

The board was very thank-ful for all the donations and grants they received for the project, as state and federal funding is hard to come by. According to Miner, what hurts Butler County the most is that they don’t have the population numbers. They are competing against Polk and Linn Counties, for example, who have bigger populations, so they tend to get the fund-ing first. However, that fact isn’t hampering the board’s spirits.

“We’re not done,” he said enthusiastically. “We always want to continue to expand the trail. We are working with our neighboring counties–Franklin County and Bremer County–trying to figure out a way to connect our trail to them.

“Our goal is to get all the way to Dumont in the near future,” he continued. “We don’t have a true estimate yet, but we’re guessing it’s going to be around what this cost–$1.2 million. Our biggest hurdle will be the West Fork bridge. That's our longest bridge that we would have on this entire trail, and part of it did get some vandalism done to it. This section was 6 miles, but it didn’t have any bridges. We've got a 418-foot bridge that we have to repair, and that’s what’s going to drive the cost up. Most of our money will be going into that. Finding fund-ing for that is going to be a difficult process.”

Local riders are concerned that the funding for the section from Bristow to Dumont will take another 10 years to raise, but the board members remain hopefully that funding will come available.

“There are funding sources that could come available in the near future through the legisla-tion. The hope is that our local legislators, like Amanda Ragan, are on board with it … and will pass some bills that will put more money into the trails,” Miner said. “They're looking at increasing the sales tax in the state of Iowa, and if so, the first 3/8 cents goes into what's called a Natural Resource Trust Fund. That would put $180 million into that fund. There’s supposed to be a chunk of the pie that could range anywhere between five and 10 percent of that money for trails only. That would increase you from any-where between 9 and 18 mil-lion dollars to be available each year.”

Right now in the state of Iowa there is only $1-2 million for trail development available annually.

“If the 3/8 cents does pass, then we could see it speed everything up. If it goes the way it's going now, where they only offer like $1 million or $2 million a year for trails, you get the whole state fighting over very little money. If all of a sudden it goes up to $9-18 million, that would really speed it up,” he said.

“It’s going to take some time. The hope is sooner rather than later, that we can get some asphalt down,” he said. “The nice thing is Franklin County has been working on their trails out to Beeds Lake State Park. If we can connect Hampton and Dumont that's going to get more trails; more people will be able to get around. We’re kind of excited about that.”

Working east, the conser-vation board is hopeful to connect the trail to Waverly in Bremer County.

“The hope is that we can connect to Bremer County too; we would connect with Waverly. It's only three miles, but the old railroad bed is gone, so we have to find a new corridor–a new way–to get there,” he said.

Currently, there is a bicycle lane along Highway 3 from Shelly Rock to Waverly, but according to Miner, that stretch is one of the highest traveled roads in the state. The conservation board is looking for other, long-term options to make the connection.

“If we connect to Waverly, Waverly, of course, is con-nected Readlyn and Denver. Denver is working on starting to get connected with Water-loo. Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Janesville are getting connected up, and Waterloo is trying to connect to Cedar Rapids too,” he said. “We would have a huge corridor if we can get connected to Waverly.”

The ceremony on Saturday concluded as the crowd let out a round of applause and cheers when the ribbon was cut, offi-cially marking the opening of the Bristow section of the Rolling Prairie Bike Trail.

“Well, that officially opens over 20 miles of paved trail in Butler County–all the way from Bristow to Shell Rock,” Miner said as the ribbon fell to the ground.

Butler County has a bike trail committee that is open to the public. They meet once a quarter in Clarksville. They talk about where they are at, how they are doing, and brainstorm different fundraisers that they can implement. If anyone inter-ested in joining, they may call or email Miner at 319-278-4237 or butlerccb@butler-bremer.com.