Groups in the North Country are working together to create a new system of signs on established ATV trails.
Corinne Rober owns Bear Rock Adventures in Pittsburg and serves as the Marketing Director with the North Country Chamber of Commerce.
She says, with the ATV economy booming in the North Country, businesses, ATV clubs and the chamber of commerce saw a need to improve the safety, promotion, and proper use of the area's trails.
"To be one of the top riding systems in the U.S., we definitely need to have signs that go with that," Rober says, "so that people know what trails they're on, they know how far it is to get from point A to point B, and where they should not be riding. And sometimes that's not really laid out with the current signage."
Rober says many of the current signs are handwritten - they don't weather well and can be hard to see.
This project got a $100,000 grant from the Polaris Foundation. Rober and others worked with five ATV clubs to come up with a consistent look for the new signs, which will name trails and help riders find services, maps and trail information. It will cover 500 miles in the Ride the Wilds trail system in Coos County, about half of the area's total trail system.
Organizers will begin installing the signs in May and hope to have them all in place by the end of the season in October.
