How MTB Trails and Tourism can Help Struggling Communities
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Greg Williams is the founder of the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship, a non-profit group based in California that’s dedicated to the restoration, preservation, and enhancement of recreational trails. The group’s Connected Communities plan offers an innovative roadmap for bringing tourism through trails to former timber and mining towns.
We talk about how the group formed, and how their trail work is impacting the local economy. Greg shares some of the strategies the group has used to bring various trail user groups together that are applicable in other communities facing similar challenges. We also discuss the ways mountain bikers can help the trail communities they visit and how groups like the STBS measure success.
Learn more at sierratrails.org.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty and friends are teaming up for the ultimate collab. |
| 0:08.3 | Joining your little ones on a fun-fueled adventure. Some fun, some food, it's all inside this happy meal. |
| 0:16.3 | Until the 2nd of February from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last. |
| 0:20.2 | Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Greg Williams. |
| 0:27.3 | Greg is the founder of the Sierra Butte's Trail Stewardship, which is a non-profit group based in California |
| 0:34.0 | that's dedicated to the restoration, preservation, and enhancement of recreational trails. |
| 0:40.0 | The group's connected communities plan offers an innovative roadmap for bringing tourism through |
| 0:45.0 | trails to former timber and mining towns. Thanks for joining us, Greg. |
| 0:50.2 | Yeah, thanks for having me. So tell us about the Sierra Butte's Trail stewardship. |
| 0:55.5 | How did and why did the group form originally? |
| 0:58.6 | Well, yeah, I had, you know, since the early 90s, I'd been doing mountain bike tours in the town of Downeyville. |
| 1:07.1 | And then started an event called the Coyote Classic in 1995 that is now called the Downeyville Classic. |
| 1:15.6 | And one of the draws to Downeyville was just, you know, this trail system that was left over from the gold mining era. |
| 1:22.8 | Lots of these trails, you know, went up into the, into the river canyons and accessed remote mines |
| 1:28.5 | and very rugged. And so I started, you know, running this tour company, had the, had a little |
| 1:35.6 | bike shop in town. I had this mountain bike festival. And then our national forest, the Tahoe National |
| 1:42.7 | Forest, lost their funding for trails. |
| 1:46.9 | And so, you know, it's hard to attract people and promote a town when your trails are falling apart. |
| 1:53.1 | So we formed a partnership with our local district of the forest and got our nonprofit status. |
| 2:00.7 | And really it was, you know, we've been doing |
| 2:02.4 | some trail work and having an annual work party that started with probably around, you know, |
| 2:08.0 | 10 people. And then it grew to 20. And we were getting, you know, for this annual work day, |
... |
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