Ceremony Marks Completion Of Trails At Mountain Bike Park

Johnson City TN

12 April, 2022

2:13 PM

Description

Press release from Johnson City Parks & Recreation: April 10, 2022 SORBA Tri-Cities members and City of Johnson City officials celebrated completion of the 5-mile Mountain Bike Park at Winged Deer Park with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sunday, April 10. The trail system at Winged Deer Park, 204 Carroll Creek Road, was completed by SORBA volunteers on March 20 with final construction of The Kidd Dreamline Trail, a .5-mile section built mainly for beginners and youth. The mountain bike trails at Winged Deer can be traced back to the completion of the Tweetsie Trail in 2014, which generated an interest in additional trails. Jim Hughes, who was serving as the City's director of golf, invited representatives from SORBA to speak about mountain biking to the Johnson City Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. This led to mountain bike trails being included in the 2015 Winged Deer master plan and work days scheduled soon after its approval. "As someone who was an avid mountain biker, I found it an atrocity that Johnson City didn't have a mountain bike trail system," Hughes said. "This was a prelude to Tannery Knobs, and the only exceptions were the smaller bike trails at ETSU that are not managed by the City. "I got together with former Parks and Recreation Director Roger Blakely. We looked at various parks, and Roger and I basically came up with the idea that Winged Deer Park would be a great site. It just evolved from there." Former SORBA president and current Parks and Recreation Advisory Board member Marc Upton credits several people with the bike park's success. "Jim Hughes was instrumental in making this happen and new Assistant Parks and Recreation Director Charles Ridlehuber has taken on that role following Jim's retirement," Upton said. "Parks and Recreation Director James Ellis has also been involved a lot, and City Commissioner and former Mayor Jenny Brock has been very supportive of the trails, coming to speak at events, meeting with the mountain bikers, and providing letters of support." Since beginning the project in 2015, SORBA has tracked the following volunteer hours, donations, grant funding and other data: 423Cycling will utilize the Mountain Bike Park and Winged Deer on April 30 to host locally sanctioned mountain bike races. For more information about the Mountain Bike Park at Winged Deer, call 423-283-5815. This press release was produced by Johnson City Parks & Recreation. The views expressed here are the author's own.