Ellen Lott asked a crowd standing near the trailhead for the future Penn Haven Trail in Weatherly to think of their favorite outdoor places.
“Could be a lake, it could be a trail," she said. "We're celebrating a new nature preserve in the making, a place where people will be able to bike, fish, hunt and boat. A place that will provide special memories like yours for many people.”
Lott is from the Trust for Public Land. The nonprofit will purchase the over 1,100 acres of land that the 5-mile trail will run through. Penn Haven will connect the borough to nearby public lands while preserving water quality and natural habitats.
The trail could also boost business and tourism in the small Carbon County borough situated between White Haven and Jim Thorpe. It also will connect Weatherly with the Lehigh Gorge State Park and the D&L Trail and protect the Black Creek watershed.
U.S. Rep. Susan Wild (D-Allentown) helped secure $1.7 million in Community Project Funding for the project.
"If I know one thing about Carbon County, it's that it is a beautiful rural county, and this kind of preservation and trail really makes a huge difference," she said.
The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) also helped to fund the project, as well as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
Borough Manager Harold Pudliner said Weatherly is an island. People drive through to get to Jim Thorpe but they don’t always stop.
The borough did an economic impact study on the trail.
"The numbers that it projected were quite impressive, and the amount of traffic that we would get here in the business it would bring," he said.
Pudliner said the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) restored Hazle Creek and is working on Quakake Creek after years of industrial damage. The trail runs through land that was once believed to be uranium rich, said Pudliner.
The waterways converge to make Black Creek, which then empties into the Lehigh River.
"You have two creeks that were dead for hundreds of years are now coming alive, and they're going to create this cold water fishery for fly fishing and everything else," he said.
The borough already has completed a quarter mile of trail. Once the rest of the land is acquired, Pudliner expects Penn Haven will take two to three years to complete.
