Clay County Commission 

Dan Haglund

Ever thought of taking a walk from Moorhead to Park Rapids along a trail?
Well, that idea has become a working plan as an extension of the decades-old Heartland Trail.
The Heartland Trail is a 49-mile paved shared-use path from Park Rapids to Cass Lake, and construction began in 1976 from Park Rapids to Walker. It is one of the first rails-to-trails projects in the country.
Two key planners on extending the Heartland Trail presented a progress report to the Clay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday morning in Moorhead.
Stewart Crosby, a landscape architect and the senior project manager with SRF Consulting Group, Inc., a Minneapolis-based engineering, planning and design firm, and Dan Farnsworth, the transportation planner for the Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Council of Governments (Metro COG) came armed with a slide show.
The two presented findings and next steps on the trail’s westward wind toward Moorhead.
In 2006, the state authorized an extension of the Heartland Trail from Park Rapids to Moorhead, and in response Metro COG created the Clay County Heartland Trail Task Force in 2014.
Crosby said he has spent the last year looking at the Clay County segment of the Heartland Trail.
Recently there have been a couple sections that were constructed in the Becker County area. A five-mile section between Detroit Lakes and Frazee.
But the study for this portion (Clay County) of the trail began in January 2024 and is slated to completed in two months (August). The key study tasks include examining the existing and planned conditions analysis, alignment analysis, cost estimates, implementation plan, draft study documentation and the final study document.
“Public engagement was a big part of this study,” Farnsworth said.
He mentioned two public open houses in July and October of last year, two stakeholder meetings, four pop-up informational events as well as a landowner meeting last October at which a good deal of public input was gathered.
Public engagement online also garnered more than 2,200 unique visitors looking at online mapping tools, trail typology survey and a trail segment survey. Several hundred comments were contributed from these visits.
The Clay County study was divided into four segments. The first starting at Centennial Park near the Red River and extends east on 15th Avenue all the way to 14th Street East in Dilworth, then extending over Highway 10 to 12th Avenue South.
“That is a future proposed trail segment that would coordinate with a future crossing over Highway 10 and a bridge over the railroad,” Farnsworth said. He said that plan is a way out, so the temporary trail is drawn from 15th Avenue North down 34th Street south to 12th Avenue South.
“That is already mostly constructed trail, at least north-south on 34th,” Crosby said.
On segment 2, the trail will extend from 12th Avenue South, east from Dilworth, past Glyndon and on to Buffalo River State Park.
“We’ve worked with the DNR on connecting into Buffalo River State Park and this is a challenge for a number of reasons,” Crosby said. “The DNR sees it as a challenging site because of high-quality natural resources and cultural and archeological sites in and around the park.”
Segment 3 would have the trail extend east beyond Buffalo River, winding its way into Hawley.
Segment 4 would extend the trail northeast from Hawley toward the Becker County line, following fairly closely along the Buffalo River again.
Two railroad bridges were mentioned as potential snags, one in Hawley and one a few miles northeast of Hawley.
Commissioner Kevin Campbell, Dist. 4, inquired about the Buffalo River State Park area, and if the MSUM-owned portion would come into play with this trail plan.
“MSUM does own land right on the east side of the park,” Crosby said. “They (MSUM leaders) said that they were in line with the state park in terms of trail planning.”
The MSUM land encompasses the former Buffalo River Golf Course.
Farnsworth mentioned the jurisdictional partners coming into play with the eventual trail extension to Moorhead. Those groups include Metro COG as the lead agency, with the majority of funding (80 percent by federal funds) from that group as well as the City of Moorhead, Clay County, the City of Dilworth, the City of Glyndon and PartnerSHIP for Health.