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Snaking 87 miles along the Calais Branch Railroad route, the Down East Sunrise Trail
will be a recreational and economic
boon to southeastern Maine.
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The boxcar destined for Machias's trailhead on the Down East Sunrise Trail gets a makeover as part of a Challenge Cost share grant.
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When: Sunday, October 21, 3-4:30 p.m.
Where: Camp Dennison in Georgetown, Mass., located off Nelson Street (from Route 97)
What: Celebration to support proposed 28-mile Border to Boston Trail
Relay walkers will converge in Georgetown at Camp Dennison near the trail's midpoint for the gathering. The public and press are invited to welcome the walkers and join in festivities, which will include refreshments, a short slide show, and presentations on the trail project.
For more information, please contact Steve Golden at 617.223.5123 or Bill Steelman at 970.740.0444. Or e-mail steve_golden@nps.gov or bills@essexheritage.org.
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Ann Rosenthal (center) helps Greenway Sojourners connect with their "inner artist" as they take part in Steel Valley Trail Council's banner painting project.
| Challenge Cost Share Grants Boost Trail Building:
Through a partnership between Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) and the National Park Service's Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program, Challenge Cost Share Grants have supported a wide range of promising trail-building projects. From providing construction costs to trailside amenities to artistic creations, these funds have given a push to developing trails around the country.
Maine
The Cost Share Program recently awarded the emerging 87-mile Down East Sunrise Trail—which connects to Acadia National Park at Ellsworth and offers views of the southern Maine coast—$4,500 to refurbish a boxcar as a trailhead center. RTC's Jeff Ciabotti, vice president of trail development, presented the check this September to the Sunrise Trail Coalition  , a local nonprofit organization advocating the rail-trail. "It is going to be a fantastic trail," he says, "well representing the Maine landscape with all its natural beauty, while providing an economic boon to the many towns and cities along the route."
Ciabotti met with coalition members in Machais, Maine, where the boxcar will be a fitting trailhead center and symbol of the former rail corridor, visible to anyone traveling Route 1 through the town. To be positioned near the former depot (now being restored as a visitor center and chamber of commerce), the boxcar is getting a facelift through state and county jail work programs and local volunteers. Cost Share funds are helping to pay for paint, sanders, lumber, lighting, furnishings, skilled labor and other construction materials.
Massachusetts
The proposed 28-mile Border to Boston Trail , which would follow the old Boston & Maine Railroad corridor from Salisbury to Danvers, just received a $1,500 grant to help raise awareness for the project. An "ends-to-the-middle" walking relay (see sidebar) set for Sunday, October 21, aims to rally support for the recreational rail-trail, which has enormous potential to link the eight communities along the pathway with other trails, nearby state parks and forests, and Great Marsh, the largest salt marsh in New England.
Pennsylvania
Earlier in the summer Tom Sexton, director of RTC's Northeast Regional Office, presented a $5,000 Cost Share grant to the Steel Valley Trail Council (STVC). The award was part of festivities during RTC's Greenway Sojourn bicycle tour, when STVC's trail banners welcomed 500 Sojourn cyclists to McKeesport and Pittsburgh. Directed by artist Ann Rosenthal, members of the community—as well as some Sojourners in McKeesport who wanted to lend an artistic hand—painted the banners to mark part of the Great Allegheny Passage. The trail art initiative was part of an effort to promote the rail-trail as STVC and other Allegheny Trail Alliance partners raise funds to complete the final nine miles into center-city Pittsburgh. The Cost Share grant supported both the trail art project and ongoing trail building.
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