“It created this false cliff where you had an opening underneath it and it was just really unsafe,” said Nick Meyer, the park district’s planning and project manager.
The yellow trail had an 850-foot elevation, about 50 feet higher than a creek bed which hikers were exposed to because of erosion that caused a tree to fall, which “kind of pulled the rest of the embankment down,” he added.
The yellow trail is a key bridge to the winding trail around the park, Meyer said.
The trail’s closing “was cutting off our main entrance where visitors and campers and everybody goes,” he said.
“So what we were left with was essentially cutting Grant Park into two separate parks and not having any access to the main section of trails within the park,” Meyer added.
Grant Park has two main entrances, one on Normandy Ridge Road and the other on McEwen Road. The McEwen entrance is home to the Kennard Nature Nook, the Mark Kreusch Nature Playce and the McEwen Barn.
The yellow trail is the only route connecting the Kennard Nature Nook area to the rest of the 189-acre nature park, according to the park district.
The district sought outside funding to restore the path, but was unsuccessful, leading it to pay for the entire project out of its general fund, Meyer said.
Reconstruction started in fall 2019. While the yellow trail is about a mile, the work included only about 1,000 feet of its path, he said.
The project involved regrading the hillside, constructing a gabion rock wall to control erosion, and repositioning the trail about 25 feet lower than it was, the park district said.
“It was a big decision on the (park) board to move forward with the project,: Meyer said. “But everybody was really happy that they did and were able to re-establish that connection back to the main trail network.”
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