Hometown Maine: The community looking to be the next big biking destination
“Mountain biking is an insanely popular sport throughout the country and Maine has seen a lot of growth in communities across the state,” Rodney Folsom with Moosehead Outdoor Alliance said.
Folsom is just one of the many local mountain bike enthusiasts confident that Greenville will soon join that list of communities.
“People really just started to hear about us last year and here we are this summer building trails and making it happen and people are excited about it,” Folsom said.
It’s the start of what the volunteer nonprofit group Moosehead Outdoor Alliance, which is spearheading this effort, believes will turn the region into a major mountain bike destination.
Already sporting a wealth of outdoor recreation and an active downtown with lodging and restaurants, Greenville touts thousands of acres of bikeable forests and magnificent views of Maine’s largest lake.
“There's currently a hiking trail that goes along the whole ridge with beautiful vistas along the way and we hope to gain some of those vistas via mountain bike trail,” Folsom said.
“To have a dedicated bike trail system is something we've been lacking forever up here,” Mike Boutin said.
Boutin has owned Northwoods Outfitters for nearly three decades. He says building a dedicated trail system only makes sense in an area that is so reliant on eco-tourism.
He hopes the system will attract an additional 60,000 visitors a year.
“Bikers seem to want to travel to where the trails are, so it's kind of fortunate. We build it and they come,” Boutin said.
“If you look at what areas like the Kingdom Trails in northern Vermont have done, that's a small rural community pretty isolated -- they had 160,000 visitors this past year alone," Folsom said.
The plan is to build around 25 miles of trails on 2,000 acres of state-owned land.
The two miles already built are getting rave reviews from bikers. Once finished, the entire system will include the full gamut from beginner to expert single track.
“There seems to be a lot of community support, everybody wants to see this happen,” Folsom said.