This Land, Your Land

As fans of the state's Mountains-to-Sea Trail celebrated the opening of a 6.5-mile segment in Raleigh last week, leaders of the Friends of the MST said Saturday they expect another 70 miles of trail to open by the end of 2012.

Kate Dixon and Jeff Brewer said in The News & Observer that the MST should measure about 610 miles after segments open near Boone, Pilot Mountain, Greensboro, Burlington, Hillsborough, Durham and Clayton in the next year.

The entire Mountains-to-Sea Trail is to eventually cover about 1,000 miles between Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Jockey's Ridge State Park.

The 6.5-mile Upper Neuse River Greenway Trail opened last Wednesday between the Falls Lake Dam and the WRAL soccer complex off of Perry Creek Road in North Raleigh. It is the first leg of what will eventually be a 28-mile trail along the Neuse River between Falls Lake and the Johnston County line. (Joe Miller has a nice Google mashup map of the trail at his Get Going NC blog.)

"Within five years we expect people will be able to walk from Clayton to Hillsborough on one continuous 150-mile trail," Dixon and Brewer said.

Still, more money and volunteer help will be needed to make the state-spanning trail a reality, the two said.