As part of our Give Back NH series, NHPR highlights small but mighty non-profits doing good work in New Hampshire communities.
Despite the recent snow storms, the Concord Lake Sunapee Rail Trail near downtown Warner is full of activity. You can find dog walkers, cross country skiers, and people riding fat bikes enjoying the winter weather — but its real time to shine is just around the corner.
Founders Tim Blagden and Kristen Riley manage the rail trail with the help of their daughter Katherine Riley Blagden.Transcript
Tim Blagden: My name is Tim Blagden. I'm with the Friends of the Concord Lake Sunapee Rail Trail, and our organization is trying to build a 34 mile multi-use path from Horseshoe Pond in Concord through Hopkinton, Warner, Sutton, Bradford, and up to Newbury Harbor on Lake Sunapee in Newbury.
This trail has so much history. There's railroad history. So you can see railroad artifacts on the trail. There's a big history of mills along the trail and along the river in Warner and Contoocook.Kristen Riley
Katherine Riley Blagden: I'm Katherine [Riley] Blagden. Tim Blagden, my dad, he kind of started it as a safe place for my brother and I to be able to learn how to ride our bikes, and get to like different places [and] be able to travel around our community. So it's a really nice way to be able to safely move throughout our town and our surrounding neighbors towns.
Kristen Riley: Hi, I'm Kristen Riley, and I'm a board member and one of the founders of the Concord Lake Sunapee Rail Trail.
I'll just say that another important aspect of this trail—and one of our goals— is to make sure that it's an outdoor classroom as well. So as much as as we can, we'll provide learning opportunities.
This trail has so much history. There's railroad history. So you can see railroad artifacts on the trail. There's a big history of mills along the trail and along the river in Warner and Contoocook. But we're also working with natural resource teams to help us identify what are the plants that are unique to this area that we could highlight for people or something that you might see along the trail that would be of interest. And then we could help educate and put some signs out there.
Tim Blagden: One of the ways we get funding is through grants. And right at the end of the year, we were extremely fortunate and we picked up a congressionally directed funding grant in the federal appropriations bill. So that was phenomenal. It's $1.2 million to build a project that gets us across Interstate 89 at exit nine, and crossing interstate is not easy to build a bicycle path.
The challenge with that is we have to raise $300,000 in matching funds, and in a perfect world, we would have those funds in hand by March 15, 2023, which is Town Meeting Day in Warner.
Now, we're extra fortunate that a lead donor came in and got us a third of the way there. And so if you hear this and you are inclined to want to see more rail trails, we the Concord Lakes Sunapee Rail Trail would really appreciate your financial support.
If you'd like to nominate a local non profit that makes your community a better place to live, send an email to giveback@nhpr.org.
