Janice Thomas, president of the Mountain Goat Alliance Board, and Patrick Dean, Recreational Trails Program “RTP” coordinator, talk while walking along an old rail bed at the intersection of Industrial Park Road and Parton Farm Road (also known as Pigeon Springs Road) in Tracy City, Tenn., which is targeted for an all-access RTP expansion. The The Mountain Goat Trail Alliance in Grundy County recently received a $200,000 grant for continuing work on the all-access trail system following the old Mountain Goat Railroad line.ABOUT THE GRANTThe Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and Gov. Bill Haslam’s office announced the grant in August as part of $1.694 million in statewide awards to projects in a dozen Tennessee counties. In the Chattanooga region, Cumberland County received a $30,000 grant for expansion and restoration of a secondary trail in Obed River Park to improve accessibility and amenities.
MONTEAGLE, Tenn. – The Mountain Goat Trail project on Monteagle Mountain just got two kicks in the pants for the next and future segments of trail work in the areas of Monteagle, Palmer and Tracy City.
The first boost for the Mountain Goat Trail project — which consists of plans for a smooth, walkable trail from Cowan, Tenn., in Franklin County to Palmer, Tenn., in Grundy County — came in August in the form of a $200,000 Recreational Trails Program grant, according to Mountain Goat Trail Alliance board President Janice Thomas and staff grant writer Patrick Dean.
The second bit of good news came from the Tennessee Department of Transportation, which approved the start of work on the trail segment between Sewanee and Monteagle, Dean and Thomas said. The first-phase piece of the trail in Sewanee is complete almost to the Franklin-Grundy county line.
The Mountain Goat Trail is a rail-to-trail project to convert 35 to 40 miles of the abandoned Mountain Goat Railroad right of way into a multiuse recreational corridor between Grundy and Franklin counties.