Goshen

Here’s an example of the amazing things we can do as a community when we combine a good idea with energetic people and the right backers. We’ve already achieved a lot! What’s stopping us from creating the next Pumpkinvine idea?

The Pumpkinvine Nature Trail

A survey conducted in 2015 by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy ranked the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail as the No. 1 trail in Indiana. The website on which the rankings were posted said that the Pumpkinvine “steals the show in Indiana. If you want to experience genuine Midwestern Americana, this is it. Pastoral scenes of Amish life and fields of gold line the past. A must-visit trail.”

This praise for the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail validates what locals have been saying about the Pumpkinvine for the past decade, symbolized by the awards the trail (and the Friends of the Pumpkinvine organization that nurtured it into being) has received from Goshen, Middlebury and Shipshewana, the towns the Pumpkinvine passes through. In 2012, the Shipshewana Town Council presented the Friends with the Quality of Life award; in 2013, the Goshen Chamber of Commerce presented the Friends with the Community Service Award in recognition of the Friends “contribution to Goshen’s Quality of Place.” And in 2014, the Middlebury Chamber of Commerce gave the Friends its Beautification Award for the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail’s impact on Middlebury.

The common theme of these awards was that this linear park passing through and connecting our communities has improved the quality of life for people in a recognizable way. The trail is a safe, off-road link between our communities that gives thousands of people a place to walk, jog, inline skate, bike and enjoy nature close to home.

However, the attitude of some toward the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail when first proposed was quite different. Critics claimed that the trail would become a magnet for crime, that users would trespass on adjacent properties and leave litter everywhere, and that its maintenance cost would be unsustainable and few people would use it. In addition, the adjacent landowners claimed that the Pumpkinvine corridor had reverted to them when the Penn Central Railroad abandoned service, so any transfer of title to the Friends of the Pumpkinvine amounted to an attempt to steal their land.

The Friends of the Pumpkinvine board, a group of bicycle, walking and nature enthusiasts, were not deterred. We had read the literature about similar rails-to-trails projects around the Midwest that showed such trails enhanced the recreational and transportation possibilities in communities and had had a positive economic impact through increased tourism, bike rentals and increased property values along the trails. We also visited numerous trails in the Midwest to see first-hand if the trails had a negative or positive impact on adjacent landowners and the communities through which they passed.

Other critical support came from local public agencies. From the beginning, the Friends’ board was in constant contact with the Goshen Park and Recreation Department and Elkhart County Parks to assess their interest in managing the trail, if all the legal hurdles could be overcome. Both expressed interest in this linear park, as did then-Goshen mayors Mike Puro and Allan Kauffman.

Armed with the support of park staff and boards and a few key elected officials and the overwhelmingly positive reports about other trails, studies of trail feasibility and the experience of seeing other trails in person, the Friends’ board signed an agreement in the fall of 1993 with Penn Central to purchase the 17-mile abandoned Pumpkinvine corridor for $100,000. Starting with hand-written addresses on a stack of 3-by-5-inch index cards, the Friends sent out a mailing to less than 200 households attempting to raise the $100,000. As the date for closing on the purchase drew near, we had raised only $60,000, so we went to the bank and borrowed $40,000 and made their asking price.

After the sale, trail critics threatened lawsuits to stop the trail based on their belief that the railroad didn’t own what they had sold us. But we had Jim Ingold, president of Cripe Title, and a title company in LaGrange examine all the deeds transferring land to the original railroad, and we felt confident that we would win any disputed corridor parcels in court.

Still, we knew that the effort needed to defend our title would be very expensive, and we were in debt. That’s when we received a legal lifeline from two Elkhart law firms which offered their services for free. The late Jim Brotherson, a cycling enthusiast himself, offered to be our legal counsel and then recruited Jim Byron and Chuck Grodnik from another firm to help with the massive job of gathering the documents to prove ownership of hundreds parcels of land, including the need to show a chain of title from landowners to the original railroad in the 1880s and 1890s to the present. Later, Doug Mulvaney joined this group, and for the first critical four years, they worked without pay.

In the end, it took 17 years and cost more in donated and actual money for legal services to establish title to the Pumpkinvine corridor than it did to buy the land. The Friends won the last lawsuit in 2011.

Critical to our efforts at changing public attitudes about the trail was creating a demonstration section on the 1.75 miles of the Pumpkinvine corridor from Abshire Park on State Road 4 in Goshen to County Road 28. Once we had proven our ownership of this section, we donated that section to the City of Goshen to develop so that the community could see and experience what a trail would look like. As we proved ownership of other sections of the corridor, we donated them to the local public agency where the trail would be located.

After the demo section of trail between State Road 4 and County Road 28 was completed in 2000, our partnership with local public agencies continued: Rich Fay and Sheri Howland of Goshen Park and Recreation, Dan Seltenright and Larry Neff of Elkhart County Parks, Marcel Coulomb Jr., Lowell Miller and Mark Salee, Middlebury town managers, and Mike Puro, Norm Kauffmann and Mike Sutter, Shipshewana town managers, were all advocates for the trail in their area.

Today, the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail has overwhelming public support. A 2003 study of trail use done using electronic counters estimated that annual use at Abshire Park was 64,563. For the trail going east from the Dairy Queen in Middlebury, it was 88,831 uses. Study after study has shown that people want to live in a community that is walkable and bikeable. I’d like to think that the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail and the other areas trails it helped spawn has helped attract and keep that clientele in our community too.

Finally, thanks to pumpkinvine.org, visitindiana.com and railstotrails.org for all the great images on this post!