Residents of Webster County and beyond have a new option for getting outdoors. That option consists of about six miles of paved trail, complete with a big bridge over a drainage ditch that connects Fort Dodge and Badger.

It is between 170th Street on the north side of Fort Dodge and Second Avenue Southeast on the south side of Badger. There will still be plenty of crisp fall days during which people can walk, run or bicycle on that trail.

The trail is obviously the result of more than a year’s worth of work by planners, engineers and construction crews.

But it is also the result of a vision that first emerged almost 20 years ago, when a group of Fort Dodge and Webster County residents started thinking about trails as a promising but nearly untapped recreational opportunity. At the time, the local trail network basically consisted of the nature trail near Snell-Crawford Park in Fort Dodge.

That trails committee, supported by Fort Dodge and Webster County officials, began plugging away at the task of adding more trails

Their work was incredibly successful. Today, the network, called the Prairie Rivers Trail System, consists of about 35 miles. It is now possible to go from Iowa Central Community College on the west side of Fort Dodge to Badger entirely on trails. And the trail building effort isn’t limited to the Fort Dodge area. A new trail through Gowrie is nearing completion.

A lot of people deserve a lot of credit for making this happen, especially property owners. Not all of the trails are entirely on public right-of-way, but fortunately there have been supportive property owners through the years who have been willing to sell a little piece of their land to make a trail possible for everyone else.

During a short event last week to celebrate the new Fort Dodge-to-Badger trail section, Webster County Supervisor Austin Hayek said the cooperation that made it possible is “the gold standard for the state of Iowa.”

He was speaking specifically about that new section, but we feel what he said applies to all of the trail work that has been accomplished in Fort Dodge and Webster County.

Our local trails are a monument to cooperation and community spirit. We look forward to seeing where that cooperation and community spirit will lead the trail system next.