Liz Kirchner
Last autumn, Montgomery County Board of Supervisors hosted the first Regional Trails Forum to broach the notion of linking the region’s five existing, but disjointed, trail systems into a single, region-long sweep of tourism, recreation, economic development and health-generating biking and walking path that would run 140 miles from Botetourt County to Galax.
It was proposed that twenty miles of new path that might connect Roanoke’s urban paths to the Huckleberry Trail could wind along the North Fork of the Roanoke through the history and landscape of Elliston and Shawsville.
At the meeting last year, Supervisor Steve Fijalkowski whose District D covers Shawsville through which the trail would run recognized that the map presented by Montgomery County showed existing little stretches of trail linked by big orange arrows representing places where there were no paths.
“It looks like more orange than trail,” Fijalkowski said, “but challenges can be overcome and you have to start somewhere,” he said.
That meeting examined existing trail plans, discussed funding and presented a vision for this project and now that vision is taking shape.
Last week, Dan Brugh, executive director of the New River Valley Metropolitan Planning Commission sent a request to VDOT to fund, using State Planning and Research funds, a study to identify the best route through Montgomery County to connect the existing Roanoke River Greenway that reaches to Salem and the New River Trail that ends in Pulaski.
The 40-mile stretch envisioned to connect connecting the Roanoke River Greenway that ends in Salem to the Pulaski’s New River Trail would be called the Valley- to-Valley Trail.
Complicating the project has been engaging multiple entities including the Cities of Galax, Radford, Roanoke, and Salem; the Counties of Carroll, Grayson, Montgomery, Pulaski, Roanoke, and Wythe; and the Towns of Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Dublin, and Pulaski and existing trails are of varying lengths, management and urban/rural character through multiple municipalities.
But walking/biking trails have implications for economic development, civic planning, recreation, public health and environment, cultural and societal awareness and education research finds and Brugh’s request was supported by resolutions from the New River Valley MPO, the New River Valley Regional Commission, and the Roanoke Valley TPO.