At its Dec. 1 meeting, the Yavapai County Resource Advisory Committee recommended $35,000 in grants to help fund a trail system that could link Bridgeport with Windmill Park in Cornville as early as next year.
“We asked for $75,000 and got $35,000,” said Judith Miller, a member of the Cornville Community Association who, with president Deanna King, led the drive for upgrades on the trail. “Which was about what we expected.”
According to the association’s April position paper, there are currently no official non-motorized trails within the designated planning area for Cornville.
However, the first phase of one designated trail network, the Cornville Trail System, is nearing development after more than a decade of planning.
“There’s a whole system designed south of Cornville Road … that is on National Forest [land],” said Jennifer Burns, recreation staff officer with the U.S. Forest Service. “We probably have about $10,000 to do a little bit of initial crew work on the system.”
The system includes an old wagon road, the Coneville Stage Historic Trail, that parallels Cornville Road, as well as several loop trails around a five-mile social connector from Zalesky Road in Bridgeport to Windmill Park, just southwest of the Cornville Post Office — designated by the Forest Service as the Backbone Trail.
“There’s a ton of old roads from when people were still allowed to drive around there,” Burns said. “It’s shifting to be a non-motorized recreation area.”
A grant application submitted Sept. 30 by the association to the RAC stated that the grant would first fund critical maintenance of the Backbone Trail. Another 5 percent would go to the U.S. Forest Service to help develop the Zalesky Road trailhead, with remaining funds going toward archaeological surveys and clearances for maintenance of other loop trails, including Black Grama Loop, Dog Leg and Side Oats Loops.
The five-mile stretch of Backbone needs restoration of trail tread, repair of drainage features on the trail surface to reduce erosion caused by nearby washes and naturalizing and sustainably rerouting social trails around the trail, the application stated.
“We have to have an agreement to bring it over to us so we can then hire the crews,” Burns said. “So that’ll take until January or February, hopefully — trail-building season. Once it gets to be June, it’s like concrete.”
“We could be looking at five years for trailhead construction — and that’s not bad. It goes on a list, then we ask, and we ask and we ask.”
The Cornville grant, according to the association’s application, will cover on-the-ground work only between the existing parking area in Bridgeport and Windmill Park.
Phase two would require additional funding and would address development of a trailhead southeast of Verde Santa Fe at an existing parking area along Tissaw Road.
“I would like to think that a year from now, we may have a well-maintained trail with two trailheads extending from Bridgeport to Windmill Park,” Miller said.
Miller next wants to push a pedestrian bridge across Oak Creek a mile east of Cornville, or a “Cornville Connector,” that would travel through the heart of the town and connect to Windmill Park.
“That was put to the side as not as important,” Burns said. “That doesn’t have a decision yet because there are endangered species issues along Oak Creek.”
The county RAC recommended eight other grants totaling more than $280,000. Eventually, the association envisions a multi-use trail will extend from the Zalesky Road trailhead to Beaverhead Flat Road east of Cornville.
For a trail map and Cornville’s top three public works priorities, please see the Wednesday, Dec. 16, issue of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
