The Hostetler bull on the trail in late '97 or early '98. (Photo by Dan Towers, Greene County Conservation Board)

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

Jefferson, Iowa, October 4, 2007 – It was 10 years ago this fall that the Raccoon River Valley Trail was completed through Greene County, which is the northern one-fourth of today’s 56-mile-long trail that crosses three counties in west central Iowa.

That means a decade’s worth of fun and memorable stories are being swapped now among those who were involved in the development of the trail in this area or have become frequent users of it.

“There have been some real adventures out there, that’s for sure, especially in the early years,” said Bill Doubler, of Jefferson, who has bicycled thousands of miles on the trail, mostly between Jefferson and Iowa Highway 141. That’s a 25-mile round-trip that he generally rode between 3 and 5 a.m. before his recent retirement from grain management, and at that time of day, “I was usually kind of a lonesome warrior out there.”

He once “had a possum get tangled up in my chain, and I bumped into a skunk but didn’t get sprayed,” Doubler said. “Last year there were a couple of badgers on the trail down in the Cooper area, and I went around them as fast as I could because they could slice up a bike tire pretty quick.

“Probably wildest of all,” he continued, “about five or six years ago there was a huge wild elk — much bigger than any deer — roaming around our area. In the real early morning, it came out of the woods north of Winkleman Switch and ran right with me down toward the bridge across the North Raccoon River. Scared the heck out of me!”

Many remember that it was politically contentious getting the trail built and opened through the county by the fall of 1997.  Most of the financing for the 13 miles of trail from Jefferson to Herndon came from state and regional enhancement funds controlled by the Iowa Department of Transportation.  It is built on a former railroad bed, where passenger service had been discontinued in the early 1950s and freight service was suspended in the middle 1980s.

Electrical utility companies wanted the right-of-way preserved, in case a power plant once proposed for the Panora area became a reality. In that case, the route might have been used for transmission lines, or even resurrected as a railroad used by coal trains. But when the power plant project was dropped, using the right-of-way for a recreational trail was one option – but far from a unanimously popular one.

People still talk about Shirley Hostetler, then a member of the Greene County Board of Supervisors but now no longer living in the area, being so angry that she and her husband put livestock gates up across the trail. They had their cattle roaming there on the trail for a time, just south of Winkleman Switch, which once was a livestock shipping point on the railroad.

“We had to handle that situation real carefully, since Shirley was on the supervisors,” said Dan Towers, director of the Greene County Conservation Board, which now owns and operates the trail in the county. “We finally got it calmed down.”

His conservation board favored the trail project, Towers said, “but probably more because they were all hunters and fishermen and were interested in preserving the habitat in the right-of-way. They weren’t as enthused about the trail itself.”

It was also a “very challenging” project from a bidding, engineering and construction perspective, said Wade Weiss, Greene County engineer, who was a ramrod on it. In the first phase of construction in the late summer and fall of 1996, they decided to pour a 5-inch-thick concrete surface on the four miles from Jefferson to Winkleman Switch. Weiss said they knew while concrete was more expensive initially, “the cost analysis told us it would be worth it” in the savings from lower maintenance costs in the future. Plus, the terrain in that area makes it very difficult to get heavy construction equipment in and out, so the less of that being necessary, the better.

The decision to use concrete for a trail was almost unheard of back then, when using asphalt was the norm. But it has proved visionary, as the surface is still exceptionally smooth and shows very little wear.

A less-expensive asphalt surface, about four inches thick, was then used for the four miles south to Cooper in the summer of 1997 and the five miles on to Herndon in the fall of ’97.

The result is a gorgeous and varied stretch of trail, with many veteran bicycle riders across Iowa saying the northern-most four miles of the RRVT into Jefferson is one of the most beautiful routes in the state.

“From the road just north of Winkleman Switch to the river is almost like an outdoor heaven to me,” said Doubler. “It’s especially beautiful in the springtime when the wildflowers are growing up in the woods, and you can hear a little water trickling in the ravines. It’s so peaceful out there, especially since it’s so far from any road and the sound of vehicles.”

Jerry Roberts, of Jefferson, a current member of the Greene County Board of Supervisors, said he and his wife Hollie have been regulars on the trail since it opened here. “It’s a marvelous recreational opportunity,” he said. “We get on our bikes and ride to Cooper and back two to three times a week.  In just that eight-mile stretch, you get the river, the woods and the open farm fields – it’s like you get a real feel for life in Iowa in that one short space.”

Others have their own favorite places on the trail and stories about it.

John Burk, of Jefferson, who is retired from manufacturing, averages 4,000 miles per year riding his bicycle – most of that being 10-mile round-trips from home to just south of Winkleman Switch and back. “I love seeing the wildlife out there,” he said. “And it’s a fun ride through there, with the woods and the river.”

Karen Shannon, of Jefferson, led the East Greene High School girls’ track team on workouts on the RRVT when she was coaching. Now she’s frequently on the trail with her daughters Olivia, 3, and Sadie, nine months, either walking with them or having them in trailers behind bicycles that Karen and her husband Allen ride. “Our favorite walk or ride is from town out to the river bridge, she said. “The girls just love being out there. Generally, it’s my only opportunity to exercise, and it’s something I can do with them.”

Jefferson-Scranton High School teacher Tom Braun, who averages cycling about 3,000 miles per year with most of it on the trail, said his “special moments on the trail include almost hitting a family of skunks, seeing eagles by the river, pausing for a stare-down with a coyote and riding the trail for almost 500 yards with a red fox, with it staying right ahead of me. Every ride is different and the wildlife, from snakes to humans, provides all the entertainment I need.”

Kelsey McPherson, a Jefferson-Scranton Schools eighth grader, was born with spinal bifida that leaves her with partial paralysis of her legs. She and her family live right next to the trail on East Wilcoxway, and Kelsey is on the trail “all the time,” she says, sometimes in her wheel chair and other times using her bicycle equipped with a hand crank.

“My friends and I ride the trail a lot, and we just go hang out on it, too,” Kelsey said. “My favorite ride is going out to the river. You see the animals in the pastures along the way, and when you get to the bridge, you can look up and down the river, see all the birds and watch the sun start to go down.”

Her mother Jill McPherson said their residence adjacent to the trail “is a real advantage to Kelsey, because she has access to it without having to go through a lot of vehicle traffic to get there. I have so many people come up to me and say they’ve seen Kelsey on the trail – I don’t even know who a lot of them are – and that they encourage her. It means a lot to me that they watch out for her.”

In a different kind of trail use, Jerry Peckumn, who farms in the Cooper area, often goes hunting on the portion of the trail where that is approved – from Winkleman Switch south to the Greene-Guthrie County line, a mile north of Herndon. He said he began hunting there while it was still a railroad right-of-way.

“It really is pretty good hunting there,” said Peckumn, who is also a bicyclist. “I’m usually looking for pheasants, but there are also a lot of quail there and Hungarian partridges, and I also hunt rabbits.” He said the right-of-way – which is generally 100 feet wide – is “a good place to work your hunting dogs. It’s a little bit easier to control them than in a field that is wide open.”

He said that “there is so little public land available for hunting now in Iowa, it really is nice to have this available.”

On south of Greene County, the first stretch of the RRVT had been opened in the fall of 1989 from Adel to Yale through Dallas and Guthrie Counties.

In 1990, the trail was connected east to Waukee, and in 1999, it was extended five miles more to the east to connect to the Greenbelt Trail in Clive. That’s where it joins the network of trails in the metro Des Moines area. In the fall of 2000, Greene County was instrumental in completing the final link of the trail – from Herndon south to Yale in the northern part of Guthrie County.

That opened the flow of trail users to Cooper and Jefferson.  And that flow is still growing.

Five years ago, the Dallas County Conservation Board surveyed riders, made some observations and did some calculations to produce an estimate that there were 70,000 users per year on the RRVT in that county.  Mike Wallace, the conservation director there, said last year they now believe the number of users has grown to more than 100,000 per year – thanks to the completion of the trail connections into the metro area.

The numbers are expected to jump again as a 33-mile “North  Loop” of the RRVT is completed in the next couple of years, to include the towns of Jamaica, Dawson, Perry, Minburn and Dallas Center. Trail advocates in Greene County now believe there is real promise in promoting Jefferson as the “northern gateway” to the RRVT, as well as being an ideal overnight stay for two-day riders out of Des Moines.

Business owners and entrepreneurs are noticing.

In the past year, three new bicycle shops have opened along the RRVT and its proposed additional route. Those shops are in Waukee, Perry and now Jefferson, with Rande and Debbie Roberts just opening Raccoon River Wheelsports across from the restored Jefferson Depot at the trailhead on East Lincolnway.

Also, two B&Bs, new in the past two years, are now operating in the Panora area; the renovation of the 117-year-old hotel is underway in Yale; there is a new vehicle campground for trail users just east of Yale; Linda and Rod Eighmy have a new vending station under development in Cooper, and Jim and Nancy Teusch are continuing the renovation of Jefferson’s former railroad hotel across from the depot to become an operating inn again. In addition, a campground with restrooms and showers is being planned between the trail and the Greene County Fairgrounds, just south of the depot.

The value of the RRVT today, at 56 miles, has been estimated at $11.3 million by the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, which has been involved in much of the trail development across the state.

“Most communities now look on having a recreational trail as being vital to their future,” said conservation director Towers. “Trails are amenities that people really want to have nearby. With our trail already in place in Greene County, just think of how many dollars of infrastructure we already have here, that we don’t have to build now.”

Keeping up with trail’s surface maintenance, mowing the shoulders, sweeping gravel when it gets too thick at road crossings and cleaning up fallen trees is always a challenge, he noted, especially with a staff as small as his. He does get help from other county staff.

Interestingly, after all the work he’s done on the trail the past decade and the years before that when it was in the planning stages, the 52-year-old Towers has never ridden his bicycle on it.

“Not that I’m rigid against riding bikes on a trail,” he said, “but in the years when I have been riding more, I always enjoyed getting out and riding on the paved county roads. But I’m glad we’ve got the trail. People love it.”

Chuck Offenburger, of Cooper, who wrote this story, serves as secretary of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association, which is a promotion and development group with representation from all three counties on the trail. His wife Carla Offenburger is president of the association.

Article Published: 10-04-2007