MOUNT IDA — Two Tri-Lakes organizations recently received awards during the 38th Governor’s Conference on Tourism, which recognized them for their efforts to aid tourism in the state.
The Lake Ouachita Vista Trail Traildogs is a group of volunteers who have helped build a 40-mile hiking and mountain-biking trail along the southern shore of Lake Ouachita. Jerry Shields, a member of the Traildogs, said the group won the 2012 Henry Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service. The award is given annually to an individual or organization that, through volunteerism, has made a substantial contribution to state tourism. The award was presented March 6 in West Memphis.
The Frontporch Stage Program, another Montgomery County organization, won the Governor’s Bootstrap Award at the same conference.
Members of the Traildogs, Shields said, are mostly retirees who live in Garland or Montgomery County. He said the Traildogs are a small group of “trailblazers” who have been working on the trail for the last seven years. He said more than 30 miles of trail have been placed along the lake shore.
“In 2005, I started developing the project by putting together a coalition of organizations,” Shields said. “The trail would connect all the resorts and Corps of Engineers campgrounds along the southern lake shore. The land belonged to the Corps and the U.S. Forest Service.
At the time, I was thinking it would be 40 to 50 miles of trail, but it’s turned out to be 40 to 45 miles since.” Shields said that as a member of the Lake Ouachita Citizens Focus Committee, he had worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on a number of projects from 2000-2005.
“I’m a hiker and a biker, but we don’t have a trail,” Shields said.
“There is no major trail of any kind around the lake, which is surrounded by Ouachita National Forest. So I proposed to the Corps the idea of building this trail.”
Work on the trail is being done by the Traildogs as a subset of the focus committee, Shields said.
In 2006, he said, the Corps responded by saying that if Shields could “garner the support of other organizations,” the Corps would support the project.
“The colonel at that time wrote me a very nice letter to say that if more than one person was willing to work on it, he would support it,” Shields said.
“So I approached other agencies. First I went to the Forest Service, which agreed to be partof the coalition as long as the Corps was part.”
Shields said he also gained the support of Montgomery County Judge Ted Elder, as well as the local chamber of commerce and the Lake Ouachita Resort Owners Association.
“I ended up with 11 different organizations,” he said, with others, like the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department, the Arkansas Wildlife Federation and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, joining.
“My thought was that one partner would not have to bear the brunt of the whole operation,” he said.
The Arkansas Forestry Commission told Shields that while it did not have funds to build a 45-mile trail, it would help Shields write grants if he could garner other support.
“We got a $30,300 National Recreational Trails grant. That was our first grant, and it was managed by the Highway Department.”
A trail for disabled visitors was also built with the aid of a $150,000 grant obtained through the Game and Fish Commission.
“All of it is on Corps land,” Shields said of the trail for the disabled. “The Corps donated manpower and machinery, as did the county. The Traildogs built the 903-foot walkway.”
Later on, Shields said, hedecided he wanted a bridge that the Highway Department was planning to tear down.
“I needed a bridge to get over to one of the campsites,” he said. “I approached Dan Flowers of the Highway Department. I asked him if they would be willing to let us use the bridge as a pedestrian bridge. He said, ‘We don’t give away bridges.’”
Shields said he went back to Flowers later and suggested that using the structure as a pedestrian bridge would save the cost of tearing down the bridge.
“I said, ‘It’ll cost you a quarter of a million to tear it down and remove it,’” Shields said. “Dan called me back in a week or two and said that if I could get the Corps to accept the bridge into its lake compound and be responsible for it, we could have it. A few months later, in 2008, the bridge was deeded over.”
Shields called the Traildogs a dedicated band of brothers and sisters who do the physical labor.
“In doing this over the years, we have developed 35 miles of finished trails,” Shields said. “We hope to complete the remaining seven miles [to Blakely Mountain Dam] either this year or in 2013.”
He said the Traildogs is a loosely organized affiliation.
“We don’t really have meetings - except on the trail - and we have no membership fees, no officers. We do all our scheduling by email,” he said.
Around 20 to 30 Traildogs do the actual trail work each year.
“One day a year, a dozen or so of us put in significant hours, and we usually have 1,000 to 1,500 volunteer hours on the trail,” Shields said. “We do one section a year, and we generally do between three and five miles a year.”
After warning the Forest Service one year that it might take “900 years” to dig the trail by hand, the group started experimenting with machinery, Shields said.
“We found an excavator, 34 inches wide - about as wide as the trail - and a mini-skidder,” he said. “We tried those out the next year for about half a mile, and it worked pretty darn well. That year we did five miles of trail in eight weeks.”
The Traildogs start work each year on the second Monday in January.
“It usually takes four to eight weeks of labor,” Shields said. “The Forest Service and the Corps will operate the machinery, and the Traildogs come in and cut the roots and the angle of repose. We build the bridges, remove the rocks, do all the things that make a trail durable.”
He said each new section must be approved by the Arkansas Archaeological Society every year before work begins.
“The state sends an archaeological and biological team to assess the section and see if thereare any remains nearby that might be disturbed by the work,” Shields said. “The Caddo Nation was active in this area, and there are lots of burial sites.”
He said the workers are careful not to violate sensitive environmental or archaeological areas.
Interpretive signs have been erected near sites of interest, such as a natural cattle dip - used for eradicating ticks from cattle back in the 1920s, Shields said - and a spot on the trail called The Old Homestead.
“It goes back to the 1800s,” Shields said of the site. “Families would come in and set up and live and harvest timber, and then when times got tough, they’d leave it, and someone elsewould come along.”
For more information, visit www.lakeouachitavistatrail. org./WP/.
The Frontporch Stage
The Frontporch Stage in Mount Ida was awarded the Bootstrap Award at the conference. Gerry Babbitt, one of the organizers of the music series, said the award is presented each year for success on a “shoestring” budget.
He said The Frontporch Stage is a live-music venue on the Montgomery County Courthouse lawn.
“We’ve been putting on concerts for 10 years,” Babbitt said. “We start in May and go to October.”
Shields, of the Traildogs, who was the president of the Mount Ida Area Chamber of Commerce in 2000, said that year’s ice storm led to the acquisition of a flatbed trailer for the annual event.
“We were totally cut off by the ice,” Shields said, “and crews had to cut their way into the county for weeks to restore the power. Florida Power & Light was especially impressed with our hospitality and wanted to do something to show their appreciation.”
The utility purchased a sound system for use at outdoor concerts, Shields said.
“Then we started looking around for a flatbed trailer for the concerts,” he said. “Everything I found cost $5,000. I found a used truck dealership that had a flatbed that had been made into a 16-by-20-foot stage.He was going to cut it up, but I asked if we could have it.”
The stage was built around the flatbed trailer.
“The music program has been going ever since,” Shields said. “Everybody just brings their lawn chairs.”
Babbitt said a nonprofit organization, Montgomery County Frontporch Stage Inc., hosts the music events.
“We sell hot dogs and Tshirts to pay the electric bill and insure it, and we’ve had some great entertainment over the years - mostly bluegrass, country and gospel,” he said.
For more information, visit www.frontporchstage.org.
Staff writer Daniel A. Marsh can be reached at (501) 399-3688 or dmarsh@arkansasonline.com.
Tri-Lakes, Pages 134 on 03/25/2012