About the HHC:
Trail Policy Issues:
140-mile Knobstone Trail Linear Park

As it was first envisioned, the Knobstone Trail (KT) would follow the steep hills of the Knobstone Escarpment from just north of the Ohio River at Louisville all the way north to where the hills peter out just south of Martinsville, 30 miles south of Indianapolis. The extension will connect the original, southern 50-mile footpath, completed in 1981, with the northern, Tecumseh footpath, to be completed in 2001. Purchase of easements or land will be required to cross the 30-miles of land between them where there are no public forest land properties.

The terrain will require that it be completed as a footpath. To invite bikes or horses on such steep slopes would destroy the foot bed, or require it to be so protected/hardened as to destroy the experience for the hiker. However, the DNR has been alarming hikers by talking (in 2000) of developing the central KT section as a multiple-use trail!

The project should be managed as a new "linear park" on the model of the 280-mile Cumberland Trail footpath being developed in Tennessee. It will serve as a major recreational opportunity for Hoosiers and a drawing card to visitors from all over the Midwest. This concept of a long footpath will create the meaningful experience that only a week or more of hiking challenge calls out from today's office-bound American. Perhaps more importantly, this through trail will serve to preserve a hilly, forested biological corridor--a land bridge- between the two major blocks of public forest land now owned in the south central part of the state.

E-mail the DNR to register your support for the 130-mile Knobstone Trail as a single-use footpath, as originally envisioned by the founders of the KT.

To build the new central KT section, the HHC is working to develop support in small communities along the projected path. The focus will be on the development of local exercise, picnic, or nature parks along the way, so that purchases will have stand-alone validity. The HHC has selected the name "Pioneer Trail" as a designation for the central section, to reflect a regional historical heritage. Promotional materials are being developed, and Service Clubs and schools are being approached. Needed parcels of land and/or easements will be identified, to be obtained by purchase or donation from willing sellers as was done by the HHC with the northern, Tecumseh, section of the KT in 1999-2000. The HHC will work with the DNR where possible to coordinate its efforts. To help with these efforts, contact the HHC at hikers@hoosierhikerscouncil.org.