Montour Trail-Letter

Volume 11, Issue 6

November/December, 2000

Greetings to Montour Trail Council members and friends. I hope your summer went well and included numerous adventures on the Montour Trail. The summer has been a busy one for the Montour Trail Council and its many volunteers. We are very fortunate in having such a great group. The huge success of the Montour Trail is a direct result of the teamwork and dedication of these individuals. Please join me in thanking them with special recognition for the following major accomplishments :

• The six (6) friends groups who maintain the finished sections and when necessary construct new trail;
• The Rib Cook Off volunteers and its overall coordinator, John Hooton;
• The Montour/ IKEA Race Committee and the race director, Jerry Agin;
• The South Hills trail blazing crew and their leader, Paul McKeown;
• The Quicksilver Bridge Crew and their leaders, Dick Quasey, Jack Peth, and Ned Williams;
• The MTC Washington & Allegheny County Design & Engineering coordinators and their leaders, Ed Taylor for Washington County, and Dave Wright for Allegheny County.

Another item that I wanted to mention were the three goals accomplished by the Public Relations Committee. A new trail map has been produced and the Montour Trail Web site has been redesigned superbly by Jerry Agin. The third goal of creating a new brochure was much more involved, but is now nearing completion. With the majority of the input from Bruce Barron and Bill Metzger, a new eight page brochure has been designed. The brochure expertly tells the Montour Trail story and will be the basis for a capital fund raising campaign. Why the need for a capital campaign? Well, the Montour Trail has been very fortunate in receiving membership funds for general maintenance and various grants for trail development. (TEA21 and ISTEA federal grants are now being used for the design mentioned above. Also DCNR , Allegheny County RAD and foundation grants have previously been awarded to the Montour Trail.) However, we have been unable to obtain funding for critical capital maintenance and some other miscellaneous items. This is due to the grants being designated for development only. Some of the capital maintenance items needed are maintenance garages, a dedicated tractor for cutting grass, a one ton dump truck, etc. The committee headed by Bruce Barron will in the near future be setting up meetings with companies and foundations to tell our story and explain our needs. Our experience has been that personal contacts within these companies and organizations is very helpful, especially in scheduling meetings with the designated decision makers. Your help as members will be appreciated in this major undertaking. We will be contacting you for your input.

Finally, I would like to invite everyone to the Montour Trail annual dinner meeting at the Findlay Activity Center on November 5. An interesting and fun-filled evening is planned. Two well known (deceased) comedians will be presented in a rather unique trail vehicle! I hope to see you there. Happy Trails!