With its many tourism attractions already in place, it still takes a main draw to pull it all together. That's exactly what the ERTS State Park and now the Rail Explorers have done, it's now a complete or at least nearly package.
In the way of a mid Summer update, we haven't seen as many horseback riders on the Elk River Trail System (ERTS) this Summer but bikers and hikers, they come in droves. There are rarely a weekend without vehicles at each of the ERTS entry rail heads.
Now year 3, the trail itself remains in good condition. Local maintenance workers are keeping the edges mowed down and trash picked up. Last month the Rhododendrons were particularly beautiful this year.
ERTS is situmandated along the Elk River which in itself has served as a fishing, swimming, wading, kayaking for decades. Couple the Elk with ERTS and now rail car rides, tourism has come a long way in a short time.
Still, this state is way behind when it comes to growing tourism and promoting it. Other than the very stale and hard to negotiate state tourism website, we're still babes in the woods. We don't have the experience and brains to know what to keep and what to toss, what to do and what to leave well enough alone.
For instance, back in April State leadership ( the folks that own the trail and BC&G RR rights of way, decided it would be better to tell down the one historic building left along the trail. That building (old Newt Bragg house) was not flooded in 2016 and still had "good bones" as one TV show calls it. Instead of rehab, State leadership quickly smashed everything to the dirt and hauled it off.
That was a dumb as rocks move.
Here's another for instance.
Last year and again this year, the entire place has been sprayed with dangerous weed killer.
All that brown came three days after State Crews applied herbicides to the BC&G RR tracks right along side the County's only trout stream and right along side the ERTS hiking trail.
As of June 2023, Roundup with glyphosate was still available in retail stores and online. However, Bayer, the current manufacturer, has said it may begin removing glyphosate from its consumer products within the year. Bayer will base its decision to remove glyphosate from Roundup on reviews by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state counterparts. In June 2023, Bayer agreed to pay $6.9 million to resolve claims by the New York attorney general that the company misled consumers. The claims say Bayer promoted Roundup as an environmentally safe product. The settlement also requires Bayer to stop advertising Roundup containing glyphosate as safe and non-toxic. Here's the full article.
Bayer has paid out so many millions in jury award settlements, they are claiming to have removed gylphosate from their most popular money makers. In reality, their new game plan, Bayer and other chemical manufacturers have changed a couple molecules, given it a new name, and Poof! everything is just hunky doory... until more people get eaten up with cancer and die.
Well heck, you got to keep the weeds cut back right?
For trail users, the herbicide contamination lingers on the dead brown weeds as you walk by, ride by, your dogs rubs against it and even for that matter, as you ride the rail cars.
Those alternative wed killers use much safer ingredients like vinegar, 3% acid, corn gluten, and such.
There are safer ways to keep weeds in check, the State of West Virginia just hasn't been forced into using the safer stuff and entering into the 21st century.
Speaking of the Rail Explorers, the place appears to be doing quite well. If you check out their booking schedule, most weekends are already 100% sold out. After just a couple weeks of operation, in June, daily runs were increased from twice a day to three trips daily. When advertising for more employees , mention was made of operating the 12 mile runs seven days per week.
For those that want to see the new tourism draws grow and are concerned about the long term health effects for those using ERTS.
As Norman one told us, we could F*** up an anvil, we're on that course.