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Trails enhance the community

Pocahontas County project will provide many benefits

Trails offer outdoor recreation for people at every level of physical fitness.

The most athletic among us can run or pedal their bikes as fast as they can on a trail. Senior citizens can move along at a more sedate pace and families can travel as quickly or as slowly as they want to.

And on a trail, everyone gets to enjoy fresh air and natural scenery.

Trails have become the kind of amenity that serve as magnets helping to draw people to a community. Their presence helps people to decide if they want to live in a given place. For that reason, trails have become an economic development tool that makes communities enticing to businesses and their workers.

However, trails don’t magically emerge from the ground, ready for use. They require lots of planning followed by construction.

Pocahontas County is now in the middle of that process. A plan to connect eight trails in Pocahontas County has been completed. The plan includes much more than that county, however. It envisions a larger trail system that will link Wright County to Buena Vista County, with Pocahontas County as a key link right in the middle.

The plan is separated into eight phases that together will yield 35 miles of trails.

Margo Underwood, the Pocahontas County Hometown Pride coordinator, said benefits of the expanded trail system include improving the physical fitness of residents, connecting communities and boosting the economy.

The Pocahontas County Board of Supervisors has already approved the plan.

We believe Underwood, the supervisors and everyone else involved in the Pocahontas County trails project are on the right track. They are laying the groundwork for an even more vibrant future for Pocahontas County.

We salute everyone who has worked so hard on the trails project so far.

We also encourage others to support the project.

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