Proposed Trail Corridor
In many locations the basic infrastructure already exists in the form of either designated trails or informal trails. Informal trails exist on ditchbanks of local acequias and irrigation districts, on abandoned right-of-ways of old railroads, and on some publicly owned land. Most notable of these are the 16-mile (26 km) Paseo del Bosque Trail, and the abandoned right-of-way of the Chili Line of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (San Luis Valley Route). Spur trails also exist, both designated trails and informal trails as above plus tributary arroyos.
The Paseo del Bosque Trail is the nucleus of the proposed trail. The Mid-Region Council of Governments (MRCOG), the regional planning group for Albuquerque and its surrounds, decided to extend the trail north to Bernalillo and south to Belen, about 40 miles (64 km) in all. In 2005, New Mexico State Parks committed $3 million to MRCOG to develop this plan. In 2006, New Mexico State Parks determined its next priority to be the segment from Belen south to Las Cruces. This was determined in part due to the potential for synergy with established state parks and ongoing trail development projects. For planning purposes, the 300-mile (480 km) trail corridor from Bernalillo south to Las Cruces was divided into six sections: MRCOG Bosque, Sevilleta Corridor, BLM Socorro Bosque, Camino Real Corridor, Elephant Butte Corridor, and Southern State Parks Corridor. A map of the trail corridor segments and trail progress has been made available by the New Mexico State Parks Division. In 2007, under the federal Recreational Trails Program, New Mexico State Parks awarded $474,698 to Elephant Butte Lake State Park for a 10.5mi section designated as West Lakeshore Trail. Meanwhile, as community trail development activities grew north of Bernalillo, especially in and north of the Santa Fe area, NMSP awarded $80,000 to the Santa Fe National Forest for a developed trailhead near Santa Fe on the Caja del Rio.
North of Bernalillo to NM 502 (connecting Pojoaque and Los Alamos), the Rio Grande passes through several pueblos and White Rock Canyon. This presents several kinds of obstacles to trail development. In particular, the lake behind Cochiti Dam backs into White Rock Canyon.
Read more about this topic: Rio Grande Trail
Famous quotes containing the words proposed, trail and/or corridor:
“On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of human vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the gods which may once have stood on the banks of this river are now, at any rate, returned to dust and primitive soil. The murmur of unchronicled nations has died away along these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester are on the trail of the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And now in one hour’s time I’ll be out there again. I’ll raise my eyes and look down that corridor four feet wide with ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence.”
—Colin Welland (b. 1934)