MPR: Riding the Munger Trail

Riding the Munger Trail
By Chris Julin
Minnesota Public Radio
September 4, 2001

People in Minnesota know what it means to have a short summer, and they're eager get outside while the warmth lasts. If you need proof, look at the statistics. Minnesota has more golfers per capita than any other state. And you might be surprised to learn that Minnesota also leads the country in bicycle trails. Wisconsin is a close second. They each have about 13-hundred miles of trail. In fact, one-fourth of the bike trail miles in the entire country are in Minnesota and Wisconsin. And more trails open every year. Here's a look at one of Minnesota's first, the Willard Munger State Trail, which runs from Duluth to Hinckley.

Highlights of the Munger Trail
by Ken Jackson
The Munger Trail stretches from Duluth, Minn., southward to Hinckley, but many consider the 15-mile "Shortline" segment from Carlton to Duluth the most scenic part of the trail. The Shortline section replaced a steep, difficult to maintain and dangerous railroad grade along the St. Louis River.

The Shortline begins in Carlton and within a mile crosses the wild, white-water-rated kayaking portion of the St. Louis River. From here, the trail passes through the hinterlands of Jay Cooke State Park.

Next it crosses the nearly forgotten path which for centuries served the Sioux and Ojibwa and European Voyagers as the Grand Portage of the St. Louis, helping connect the Great Lakes and Mississippi River, a main thoroughfare of the continent.

Leaving the park, the Shortline continues for another four miles of wooded, deeply-eroded terrain to the edge of Duluth. The trail climbs down the undeveloped and uninhabited rocky bluffs above Duluth and Lake Superior. The trail alternately clings to the side of the hill or rests in one of a number of massive rock excavations into Duluth gabbro (volcanic rock).

The trail emerges from this wild territory a mere one-and-one-half miles from the trailhead in the Norton Park neighborhood of Duluth.

For more information, see Jackson's Munger Trail Web site.

KEVIN ARENDS HAS SPENT A COUPLE DECADES WORKING FOR the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, but he says some days he feels like he doesn't fit in. Many of his colleagues work with trees and animals, but Arends is in charge of laying asphalt. He does lots other things, too, as the regional supervisor of trails and waterways in Moose Lake. But he's particularly proud of the piece of black-top under his feet on this summer morning. It's a 75-mile stretch of pavement called the Munger Trail. It might be the longest paved bike trail in the world.

"Even if you pave a trail in rural Minnesota you'll still seem to get a lot of users to it, and they'll commute a long way to get to it," says Arends. "This one here that we're standing on gets a lot of use for a number of reasons. One, it's by some urban centers, Cloquet, Carlton, and Duluth. But, two, it's also extremely scenic."

The 15 miles of trail between Duluth and Carlton follow an old train route through deep cuts in the rocky cliffs over Duluth. Old railroad lines like this are popular with bike trail builders for a couple reasons. For one, the railroads did much of the physical work of building bridges and slicing through cliffs. But maybe even more important, they did the expensive and difficult political work of getting access to long, uninterrupted strips of land.

Kevin Arends says a few decades ago, people in Minnesota started thinking of old, abandoned railroad lines as an asset.

"We're one of the pioneers in converting rails to trails, and we were really the state that started looking seriously at putting down asphalt surfaces, and good surfaces for bicyclists. Other states would love to have what we have, and would love to do what we've already done," says Arends.

A few states are starting to catch up. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington each have hundreds of miles of bike trails, but Minnesota and Wisconsin will probably stay in the lead for years. Keith Laughlin is the president of the Rails to Trails Conservancy, a national non-profit group that helps build bike trails. Laughlin says states in the upper Midwest have an advantage over other states. Back in the early 1900s, the region was ribboned with railroads.

"When there began to be some of the industrial decline that the old industrial Midwest suffered in the '60s, and then going into the '70s - you know, the notion of the Rust Belt - it created a tremendous opportunity in terms of taking these and not just allowing them to sit fallow, but to convert them into trails," Laughlin says.

In Minnesota, the DNR built most of the long trails, from the Heartland Trail near Park Rapids to the Root River Trail near Lanesboro. But Munger Trail supervisor Kevin Arends says cities and counties are following the state's lead.

"The Cannon Valley trail down by Cannon Falls and Red Wing is administered and managed and owned by two different counties," Arends says. "And the Mesabi Trail up on the Iron Range is administered and managed by the local units of government up there, the counties and the cities and the municipalities that it passes through."

Looking to the future, Arends sees what he calls "a big happy system" of state, county and city trails. That dream won't come cheap. It costs about $50,000 a mile to build a paved trail. And most of that money comes from the state's general fund. In contrast, snowmobilers, ATV riders and cross-country skiers pay for their trails with license fees and special taxes.

But Kevin Arends says he doesn't get phone calls complaining about the cost of the bike trail. He says once a trail is paved, the voices of enthusiastic supporters drown out the few nay-sayers. When the DNR paved the section of the Munger Trail near Duluth, Arends says people were so eager they tried to ride on it before the asphalt had cooled. He says the trail has always attracted a mix of locals and out-of-towners.

"When we first paved the Hinckley to Moose Lake segment in '86, I couldn't believe the number of people that would put bikes on their cars, drive up from the Twin Cities all the way to Hinckley, which is 60 to 75 miles, unload their bikes and then ride their bikes on the trail. That shocked me," says Arends.

Fifteen years later, the Munger Trail still attracts that same mixed crowd. Many riders are local people, Kevin Arends among them. He rides 15 miles on the trail every day to his office. But plenty of people still drive to get here.

In a parking lot in the town of Carlton, Kathy and Al Ciekowicz are pulling two bicycles out of their truck. They're wearing bike helmets and gloves, and they have little rear-view mirrors attached to their glasses. They've driven from La Crosse, Wis. to ride the Munger Trail. They're retired folks who spend lots of time on their bikes. In the past year, they've biked western trails in Arizona and Washington state. Two years ago they went south.

"We biked in Texas," recalls Al, "through the state trails, state parks and so on, and went up the East Coast and we did the Mount Vernon Trail."

Kathy cuts in politely with the wave of a bicycle-gloved hand.

"I have to comment on the Minnesota and Wisconsin trails," she says. "You are so far ahead of the rest of this country, with reclaiming the old railroad beds, that I wish more people would be aware of it. They're fantastic trails. And we know that. We've traveled all over the U.S."

Perhaps Minnesota could take Kathy Ciekowicz' advice, and try to get the word out about its bike trails. But DNR trail supervisor Kevin Arends says tourism is not the point. He says it's great if tourists show up to use the trails, but the state builds bicycle trails for the people of Minnesota.

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