The very popular biking and walking trails at Yonah Preserve, north of Cleveland, could see some additional areas for people to enjoy.
Clark Neal with Northeast Georgia Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association (SORBA), and Trail Project Coordinator for the original trails, presented an update to the White County Board of Commissioners during their meeting Monday night.
Neal shared what the group would like to do to expand the recreation opportunities at the site. Neal said that they are eager to pursue upcoming grant opportunities that could add two more trails to the site. This would add nine more miles to the already 11 miles of trails there.
This will be the first major project for the trail system since its opening in 2018.
Neal said after the meeting, “With the 11 miles of trail that we have now, people can ride that in one day, so they’re not necessarily coming to spend the night. They still frequent our restaurants and go to the brewery. Spent time after. But if we have 20 miles of trails, that’s usually a multi-day ride destination, so people will come and stay overnight, spend even more tourism dollars.”
He also said, “The other thing is our children have come up, we have a resource for them for the mountain bike team. We’ve seen kids come through and graduate, and now we’ve got the second generation or third generation of kids that are out there using this resource that we provided to the county.”
The commission board gave its unanimous approval to allow the group to move forward and seek funding for the new project.
