A committee that formed ten years ago to help develop trails through Fort Madison continues to make progress.
The members of PORT (Promoting Outdoor Recreation Trails) joined others from the community this week for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for what they’re calling the Rodeo Connector Trail.
The mile-and-a-half stretch runs from behind the high school to along Avenue B, then along 15th Street to the grounds of the Tri-State Rodeo, which is where they held the ceremony.
“I’m really passionate about giving people the tools they need to be healthy,” said Angie Budnik, PORT’s Chairperson and the Director of Marketing for Great River Health.
“It’s easy for us to sit back and say, ‘You need to be healthy.’ But if you don’t have the tools to do that, it makes it more difficult.”
She said PORT has now completed four sections of trails for walking, running, and bicycling. The group’s five-year plan calls for the next phase to go past the Baxter Sports Complex.
In the past ten years, Fort Madison has added about four miles of trails. Budnik acknowledged that doesn’t seem like a lot.
“But it’s very expensive and time consuming to get them all built,” she said.
Budnik estimated a half-mile of trail costs at least $500,000. And she said in addition to the cost, a lot of components such as engineering are necessary, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources gets involved if a trail affects a wetland.
She said creating a network of trails is not for the faint of heart.
“You really do have to have the right people sitting at the table. We had school people, chamber people, city people. We started pulling in all those people who we thought would have influence and power to help us make this happen,” she said.
Budnik said trails are a great recruitment tool for communities, and the process of building them puts a lot of money back into the community.
A couple others who’ve been with PORT since the beginning spoke during the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“This started from a vision or a dream of how to make the community better, and it’s more than I think we could have ever imagined. Yet we still want to do more,” said Rachel Benda.
“We couldn’t do it without everybody’s support this year, and it’s exciting to see. So keep the excitement alive.”
She said they would like to have trails that connect, for example, to Montrose and to Burlington.
The committee’s Emily Biddenstadt is also Community Health Program Director at the Lee County Health Department.
She initially got involved to help PORT find grants and other funding.
“Now I’m mainly doing it because I want something for myself and my family to do together,” she said.
The women said the hospital and other businesses have given donations to help pay for projects.
PORT received what it called “a sizeable donation” from the Great River Health Foundation (also known as the GRHS-FMCH Community Health Foundation) to complete the Rodeo Connector Trail.
“The Community Health Foundation was put in an unusual and unique position. We were given a pile of cash, and we were told to spend it in Fort Madison in some way that would help the health and safety of our community,” Neal Dodd, Chairperson of the Foundation, said during the ceremony.
“It became obvious almost immediately that the starting point was the PORT Rodeo Connector Trail. The PORT people were organized, they were ready to promote their excellent ideas to us, and the rest is history.”
PORT got its start because Fort Madison served as the final stop for RAGBRAI – the annual bike ride across Iowa – in 2013.
Budnik said that by serving as the finish line, the city received around $60,000 from RAGBRAI to put back into the community.
The trail system is the project the members of the original PORT committee came up with for that money. They pitched the idea to the city, which agreed to it.
The first phase connected Ivanhoe Park to Bluff Road. It was completed in 2016.
The second phase intersected Phase One and connected to 48th Street.
The third phase connected 48th Street to the hospital.
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