Pisgah National Forest gets $2.5M boost to build multiuse trail system

Does Pisgah National Forest seem too crowded some days?

Its trail system is about to get some elbow room, with an infusion of funding from North Carolina to expand its hiking, horseback riding and mountain biking trail system in Old Fort, the small McDowell County town just over the mountain to the east of Asheville.

State lawmakers just allocated $2.5 million in the state budget to complete a trail building project in Pisgah National Forest. The trails will be built in the area surrounding Old Fort, an 811-person town. This is part of a larger initiative to revitalize the local economy by leveraging the town’s proximity to nature, according to members of the partnership that worked to build this new multi-use trail system.

The Grandfather Ranger District of the U.S. Forest Service is working with Camp Grier’s trail development group, The G5 Trail Collective, to build the 25 to 30 miles of trails over the next two years. Camp Grier is a more than half-century old nonprofit camp situated between Old Fort and U.S. Forest Service lands. This will complete the 42-mile trail project in the area, which was approved in late 2021.

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The five counties that make up the Grandfather District are McDowell, Burke Caldwell, Avery and Watauga.

The project’s seedlings were planted in 2016, when Camp Grier began a relationship with the Forest Service, according to Camp Grier’s Executive Director, Jason McDougald.

McDougald said that relationship blossomed into a partnership agreement, which allowed Camp Grier to work with the federal agency to build trails on public lands. Lisa Jennings, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service, explained that the partnership agreement allowed Camp Grier and its affiliates to raise and spend funds on national forest lands.

McDougald recalls that he began to meet with community groups in the area in 2019 to solicit public input on the trails built. Black Old Fort residents informed the planning process in meetings at the time with the help of People on the Move for Old Fort, a community collaboration group, McDougald said.

“It was really that coming together in partnership that changed the trail project to a community development project,” McDougald said.

The first six miles of trails were built using a 2020 grant from the Dogwood Health Trust, the nonprofit formed to receive the proceeds of the 2019 sale of Mission Hospital to HCA.

One of the other partners in the project, Eagle Market Street Development Corp., a downtown Asheville-based organization focusing on community support, property and economic development in Western North Carolina, worked to develop an economy around the trails. EMSDC helps disenfranchised communities build generational wealth, according to its website.

“We started to build momentum around the trails to be really conscious of what other community development needed to come alongside that,” Stephanie Swepson-Twitty, the Chief Executive Officer of EMSDC, told the Citizen Times.

Swepson-Twitty grew up in Old Fort, where she still lives. She said that the small town once used timber to power its local economic engine, then it pivoted to manufacturing, but once those employers left, the town’s economy was hurting.

“I’ve watched it all my career as well as my time living in the community,” she said. “It was somewhat thriving under manufacturing to being decimated in recent times. With the onset of the pandemic came the realization that we could shift the paradigm through outdoor activity and recreation.”

EMSDC used the Dogwood funding to purchase property in Old Fort’s downtown, Swepson-Twitty said, which became the Catawba Vale Business Hub. Camp Grier helped build a 100-space parking lot for visitors. There are now 11 new businesses in the downtown area, including the business hub, which opened July 2022.

“There have been a lot of new businesses that have opened since 2021,” McDougald said. “Those are all small businesses that are here in town that weren’t here in 2021.”

County officials believe that Old Fort’s increased outdoor access and surrounding economy will bring tourists to the area.

“Outdoor recreation stimulates the economy, particularly when you talk about some of the National Park Service units like the Blue Ridge Parkway and Smoky Mountain National Park,” McDowell County Tourism Development Authority Executive Director Shannon Odom said. “It all ties into that recreation economy.”

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Odom said that the McDowell TDA will begin reaching out to national publications to bring outdoor lovers from around the country to the small WNC town.

Jennings told the Citizen Times that the Forest Service is convening with local partners to decide which trails they want to prioritize once they begin to build. Once the groups determine what trails need to receive the highest priority, they will put out a request for proposal for contractors. The groups rely on volunteers to build trails as well.

“Without the volunteerism, we would not be talking about new trails on Forest Service Land,” Jennings said.

Mitchell Black covers Buncombe County and health care for the Citizen Times. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @MitchABlack. Please help support local journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Pisgah National Forest trail system to grow in Old Fort