Off-highway vehicle riders will now have a space to develop their riding skills — a space that honors the man who was instrumental in the creation of the Gypsum City OHV Park south of Fort Dodge.

Larry Leiting was the owner of Flooring America in Fort Dodge and the chairman of the Fort Dodge Convention and Visitors Bureau in the early 2000s.

“He had a passion for this park and had the idea to meet with the gypsum companies, along with Dennis Plautz and a few other folks,” said Matt Cosgrove, Webster County conservation director, during a dedication at the park in October. “Fortunately, those conversations went well, and today you see the fruits of that labor.”

Since those first meetings in 2000 and the park’s initial opening in 2006, thousands of riders have come to enjoy the tracks and 65 miles of trails on 800 acres of land.

“Little did they know, 20 years later, that we would have Iowa’s largest off-highway vehicle park because of those efforts,” Cosgrove said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the OHV park saw a 300 percent increase in use — with most park visitors coming from out of the area, or even out of the state, Cosgrove said.

There are eight OHV parks in the state of Iowa, though three are currently closed — two due to the 2020 derecho and one because of flooding. According to Dan Kleen of the Iowa Off-Highway Vehicle Association, the Gypsum City park is larger than the other seven parks combined.

Leiting died Oct. 22, 2022, at age 86.

“This was a really neat and special way to honor him,” said Pat Leiting, Larry’s son. “You know, a lot of these ideas were contrived over a round table with a beer and a napkin, so it’s pretty special when you look out at the park now.”

Pat Leiting noted that many others were vital in the joint effort of creating Gypsum City, including former state Sen. Daryl Beall and former state Rep. Helen Miller, who worked to get laws changed to allow the creation of the OHV park on the former gypsum quarries.

“It was the collaboration of everything that made it work and evolve into the crown jewel that is here now,” Pat Leiting said.

The skills development course features 15 obstacles — the culvert crawl, balance beam, step up, rock garden, log jump, log pyramid, teeter-totter bridge, off-set logs, off-camber logs, hill climb, log ride, whoops, tire garden, tire climb and wagon wheel.

According to Tasha Nielsen, trail technician at Gypsum City, the course is open to all the vehicles that are allowed in the park. Each obstacle also has options for varying levels of difficulty.

Many of the obstacles are made with recycled or donated material, including recycled culverts and tractor tires. The teeter-totter bridge is actually the bridge that formerly passed over part of Badger Lake on one of the trails at John F. Kennedy Memorial Park.