Your ideas needed for trail on Continental Divide, linking Dinosaur Museum, bog and parks
Could you envision a scenic trail, worthy of both marathons and baby strollers, that would loop through our part of the Midwest’s Continental Divide? It would connect Potato Creek State Park and Rum Village Park, then branch off to reach Lydick Bog and the Indiana Dinosaur Museum and beyond.
The vision is just starting. Three consulting firms are at work. And a series of meetings July 15-17 will invite the public to offer their input for the first time. Or you can take a survey now.
Either way, you’ll be asked: How best can we connect so many natural resources along the western side of St. Joseph County?
There is some serious drive to this dream. The Indiana General Assembly passed Senate Bill 468 this year to establish a commission that would develop the Midwest Continental Divide Trail, as it would be called.
The legislature also provided $2 million per year for the next 20 years to develop the trail.
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The aim here isn’t just to connect dots between the places I mentioned, along with others like a chain of glacially formed kettle lakes (Lydick Bog is among them), the Kankakee River, Dixon Ditch and Four Winds Casino.
Rather, consultant Shawn Peterson says, the idea is to strategically design the trail so that it invites tourism, encourages people to keep living here, spurs economic growth and actually conserves parks and other natural resources.
“It requires a fair amount of thought,” says Peterson, who's president of Community Development Partners, which is serving as project manager. “This is not utilitarian. We want to create the best experience for … generations to come.”
At this very early stage, he says the initial idea conceives a 26-mile loop trail linking the casino, Rum Village Park, North Liberty, Lakeville and Potato Creek.
Then a roughly 10-mile trail would link that to New Carlisle, Lydick Bog Nature Preserve and the Indiana Dinosaur Museum.
The hope would be to also connect these trails directly into downtown South Bend
Long term, Peterson suggests it could be “powerful” if all of that could be connected to the Marquette Greenway between New Buffalo and Chicago, along with the trail that currently runs from Mishawaka to Niles.
Peterson says consultants have connected with the biannual World Trails Conference for ideas on how to develop a trail so that it draws people from around the country.
Maybe folks visiting the University of Notre Dame for a few days might seek it out, he suggests. Or come back to visit again.
Local entrepreneur Mark Tarner talked about this concept last year when I wrote about the trails he developed at the Indiana Dinosaur Museum, where signs point to and talk about the divide. (Yes, there’s a Continental Divide here where water drains either east to the Great Lakes or west to the Mississippi River.)
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The future of nature conservation, Tarner suggested, can be done through a mix of business and recreation. He’s eagerly awaiting a short connection to be finished between his paths and those at Lydick Bog Nature Preserve.
The county’s executive director of economic development, Bill Schalliol, has also talked excitedly about developing a trail system to connect this and the massive Amazon and GM developments in New Carlisle.
It’s far too premature to say where the route would actually go. That’s where you come in.
There will be four open houses where the public can drop in anytime to learn more and offer their ideas:
∎ 3 to 4:30 p.m. July 15 at Rum Village Nature Center, 2626 S. Gertrude St., South Bend.
∎ 6 to 7 p.m. July 15 at Lakeville Community Center, 214 W. Patterson St., Lakeville.
∎ 7 to 8 p.m. July 16 at North Liberty Community Building, 300 S. Main St., North Liberty.
∎ 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. July 17 at Indiana Dinosaur Museum, 7102 Lincoln Way W., South Bend.
You can also fill out a brief survey now about how you might use the trail and what you’d like to see in it. Find the survey at midwestcontinentaldivide.com/survey.
Another series of meetings in late summer or early fall will share what the research showed.
As with other trail dreams, this one could take many years to fully develop.
Here are the other key players:
∎ MKSK is a national consulting firm, with offices in Indianapolis, that has been hired to study all of the natural resources and properties that the trail might connect and preserve, plus how best to link them.
∎ Jones Petrie Rafinski is a local consulting firm that the county hired to seek a way to develop trails by the new industries near New Carlisle. Planners hope those trails would dovetail with the Continental Divide Trail.
∎ The commission that Indiana legislators created will oversee the Continental Divide Trail. Per the legislation’s orders, its five voting members will be appointed once the land planning is done. The county, city, state senate and house, and the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi will each appoint one member for four-year terms.
∎ A nonprofit land conservancy organization is now being established that could hold land and serve as a public/private partnership in the trail’s development.
Learn more at MidwestContinentalDivide.com.
Photos Courtesy of: South Bend Tribune