By Miles Hilton
I spoke to Scott Johnson, President of the Ellicottville-Great Valley Trail (EGVT) committee, as he headed to an EGVT meeting. “Hopefully it won’t be too long,” he laughs, “we’re talkers.” And there’s a lot to talk about. The EGVT trail, as its name suggests, will connect Ashford Hollow, Ellicottville, and Great Valley, with offshoots to the Holiday Valley Tubing Park and Ellicottville Central School, among others, for a total of 16 miles of connected, local trails.
Tier Trail funded the design of the EVGV system, and they hope that they agree to fund the building of the trail
People “want to be outside and enjoy Ellicottville’s beauty” Johnson points out, and the trail will provide “more summertime activities” for those who want more casual access to the outdoors. For winter recreation, there are “talks of grooming some of it in the winter for fat biking and crosscountry skiing”. As a “multiuse trail, pretty much anything non-motorized will be allowed”.
While most of the trail will not be paved, “areas through town” will be, to allow access for “strollers and wheelchairs” as well as easy biking. The committee is “ultimately just trying to give locals more access to the area”, and get runners, bikers, and those who commute by foot “off the side of the roads”.
The committee focuses heavily on this safety aspect, partly in hopes of attracting grant money ear-marked for pedestrian and bike safety. A video on the EGVT website (https://evgvtrail.org) shows the current, unsafe conditions for those walking along Highway 219, including students walking or biking to the nearby Ellicottville Central School. Community members interested in keeping up with progress on the EGVT can head to the website, or follow the EVGV Trail on Facebook.
Longer-term, the committee hopes to connect it with larger networks of New York State trail systems, says Johnson, who hopes “that a trail would come down out of Buffalo ridge park area and connect with us and loop around to the Genesee Valley” Greenway trail. This would connect Ellicottville to the 750-miles Empire State Trail, which runs North-South from New York City to the Canadian border, and East-West from Albany to Buffalo, as well as to the 90-mile Genesee Valley Greenway, a fragmented trail which runs from Rochester to Cuba. Even Pennsylvania “has reached out,” says Johnson, “they’re trying to build a trail coming out of the Pittsburgh area and across to us”.
The committee is actively fundraising to complete the trail, which is grant- and donation-funded. On the local level, “donations can be made to the Cattaraugus Region Community Foundation” online (cattfoundation.fcsuite.com) or in donation jars at several local businesses. A bike, donated by Loud Underground, is being raffled to support the project: the drawing for the winners will be at a November 19th “Bills party/raffle drawing party”. The committee is also seeking grant funding. A grant from the Southern Tier Trail funded the design of the EGVT system, and “we hope that they agree to fund the building of the trail”, says Johnson. But the committee is “going to keep pushing in case that doesn’t happen” and has “applied for a couple more grants to build sections through town park and arboretum.” Donations being solicited are partly to secure “match funds so we can get those grants”, according to Johnson. If those funds are secured, the committee “could potentially begin work next year” on the section of the trail through the Village.
Part of that trail is already under construction. A section “from Tim Hortons to the town center has been cut in,” says Johnson, and the “rest of it we’re going to keep working on.”
The “trail committee has been at it for approximately 10 years”, Johnson continues, and “we are gaining traction, things are looking up”. They “got some easements settled recently”, allowing the trail to cross private land. With the Southern Tier Trail handling design and engineering of the trail system, and grants in the works to construct portions of it, Johnson is excited about the progress that the next few years will bring. “I’m so pumped” he laughs, adding that there are “big plans in place, who knows how many years or decades it’s going to take” but the committee is in it for the long haul.
EGVTmap: The 16-mile trail system will connect Ellicottville and Great Valley, providing recreation and safer access for bikers and pedestrians. A grant from the Southern Tier Trail funded the design of the EGVT system, and they hope that they agree to fund the building of the trail.