Plans to bring a new five-mile hiking and biking trail to the wooded area behind Fort Crevecoeur Park are shaping up.
Scott Bailey, a member of the Peoria Area Mountain Biking Association, received permission from the village's newly formed park district to blaze five miles of new trails.
"And in the last couple years, I guess with COVID, kind of putting restrictions on activities and entertainment, the mountain biking and hiking has turned into a really big activity to do around the nation," he said.
The first step is opening back up the overgrown original path from the Fort Crevecoeur monument down towards the Illinois River.
Bailey said the new trails won't go all the way down to the railroad tracks near the river. His vision is to offer a woodland trail environment with views of the river, the Peoria skyline, passing barges, and the bridge.
"It's a very scenic set of woods for building the trail system through, actually," he said.
The terrain is hilly, but not too difficult to traverse, Bailey said. The land was shaped by glaciers thousands of years ago.
"What's unique about the woods is that the canopy, the trees are so large and tall, that it's pretty much a shaded open canopy underneath there," Bailey said, noting that on hot days it often feels 15 to 20 degrees back in the woods, with a natural breeze blowing in from the river.
The trails could also serve as a regional draw, bringing more people to Creve Coeur's businesses, Bailey said.
Volunteers are gathering each Wednesday at 5:15 p.m. at the park to work at clearing out the trail. Bailey said about a quarter mile of trail is already cleared, and it should be fairly easy to train up a team of volunteers on how to do the work with the tools provided.
"We should have a completed trail rideable and hikeable by the end of this year. And then I've got an agenda for the next couple years of how we want to flag out and mark and build trails to kind of encompass the full 80 acres that we're allowed to build trails on," Bailey said. "It'll be a few year project to get everything completed. But yeah, by the end of this fall here, there will be another addition or a really nice trail for people to come and enjoy."
