Two years of groundwork from volunteers — supplied by a Healthy Living grant from the Kansas Health Foundation — have led to one of the area’s most remarkable trail systems.
Organizers will celebrate the opening of the Lehigh Portland Trails with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday.
The festivities kick off at 10 a.m. at the west trailhead. (That’s the area near Elm Creek Park South).
To get there, visitors must head south out of Iola on State Street, turn east onto Bassett Street (the corner just north of Gates Corporation) and then curve back north onto South Washington Avenue.
In addition to comments from a number of local officials, the University of Kansas School of Architecture will set up its MoCo Lab. The Mobile Collaboration trailer is a retrofitted camper trailer set up as a mobile classroom.
There, visitors will be provided all sorts of information about the Lehigh Portland venue, the history of the Lehigh Portland Cement Company and a schedule of upcoming events here and elsewhere across the state.
The MoCo lab also will have healthy snacks for visitors young and old.
THE LEHIGH Portland Trails are the latest of more than 20 miles of new trails built in Allen County over the last decade.
The Prairie Spirit Trail connected Iola to points north in 2008, was extended through town in 2012, and then connected to Humboldt in 2013 as the Southwind Rail Trail.
In addition, the Missouri Pacific Recreational Trail, which dissects Iola, was opened 2015.
The latest venture, completed just this summer, was the placement of a 63-foot iron bridge that originally spanned Owl Creek west of Humboldt.
The bridge spans a fissure and provides a picturesque view of a wide, swirling section of Elm Creek.
The setting of Saturday’s festivities will shift from the west trailhead to the bridge for the ribbon-cutting.
From there, teams of two will lead tours of the elaborate Lehigh Portland Trails network. Don Burns and Randy Rasa will lead the way along the more than 5 miles of “single track” trails, those barely wide enough for a hiker or cyclist.
