FAYETTEVILLE — The city’s spreading network of trails carries walkers, runners and bikers alike, but only one secluded cluster of paths near Lake Sequoyah welcomes horseback riders.
Fayetteville’s Parks and Recreation Department and the Lake Sequoyah Riding Club have worked together for the past year to make horse-riding possible, with riders clearing, repairing and maintaining dirt and gravel paths on the western shore in exchange for sharing them with hikers and mountain bikers. After a 12-month trial period, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board has decided to make the arrangement permanent.
“It’s just been a great partnership, and they’ve held up their end of the bargain,” said Byron Humphry, the city’s parks maintenance superintendent. “So far, I think it’s a win-win.”
The paths spread from a trail head near the spillway at the lake’s northern end, winding through dense woods that thin out here and there into quiet stretches of grass. A horsefly or two buzzed around as longtime horse trainer Susan Sullivan and four others rode their horses under the canopy Wednesday evening.
“We ride pretty much every day,” Sullivan said, occasionally reaching to the side with a pruner to snip stray tree branches as they passed by — one small piece of the trail-clearing effort. “This is a wonderful place to train horses.”
Though locals have taken their horses to the 1,400-acre park around the lake for years, the practice sparked controversy about a year ago. A handful of people complained to the city about the horses’ presence and some damage to the paths, which alerted some city officials to the riding group for the first time. On the other side, the riders learned for the first time they weren’t actually allowed around the lake.
“So they told us to quit riding out there,” said Lynn Yandell, president of the riders club, which has 75 members.
Yandell and others then met with Humphry and parks director Connie Edmonston to work out a deal. The club would reroute small sections of trail or otherwise address drainage problems, lay down gravel and shore up some path edges to make them more durable. About 40 volunteers showed up for the first day of work, Yandell said.
“There were some of the trails that were so overgrown people didn’t even know they were there,” he said. City officials “were very cooperative and very nice” throughout the process, he said.
The city often works with volunteer groups such as the Boy Scouts and Ozarks Off Road Cyclists to help maintain trails and clean parks around Lake Sequoyah, Lake Fayetteville and elsewhere in town. For the equestrian project, the city contributed about $1,000 in trail markers and a trail head kiosk with a map of the area, Humphry said.
“Some of that trailwork we just don’t have the personnel to do,” he said, adding the equestrian sections could eventually extend to the lake’s eastern side.
Until then, riders will keep coming out for what Yandell said are the only city-owned equestrian trails in this corner of the state. Sullivan has applied to become a concessionaire, much like vendors at the Fayetteville Farmers Market, which would let her take horse-training customers from her Flying - Q Farms stables onto the public trails, too.
“We feel like we’re her family sometimes,” joked Lee Ann Dedmon of Lowell, who was riding with her daughter, Addison, with the horse-riding group Wednesday. “We’d come , out here every day if we could.”