JULY 2015
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
said the nature side of Soldier Spring Park, where a multi-use nature trail is
proposed, has been largely left alone and “very native for probably the last 15
years in that lower section of the park.”
But things are about to change, he said, as the city begins to revamp its
entire parks system’s master plan and hone in on some major improvements to
Soldier Spring Park. Through the master plan development process, the City of
Weatherford and its citizens will look at if/where the proposed trail will fit into
the future of the park system.
“The first plan is to bring [Soldier Spring Park] up to code, like ADA accessibility, making sure the hazards are addressed and then start developing some
of the parking that’s in the master plan for that park,” Goodman said. “As we
do that, the one thing that I want to address is the [main] trail system. We are
going to be talking to our concrete contractor to see what it would take to redo
that trail. It’s buckling, it’s asphalt, so it follows the contour of the land, and
asphalt breaks down.” Goodman said the only key maintenance the nature
side of the park has received until now is the removal of hazardous tree limbs
and dead trees.
He said the lack of maintenance is noticeable when visitors travel past
man-made “bandit trails,” also known as volunteer trails. Some bandit trails
have turned into “washes,” Goodman said, and are no longer usable trails, or
steep drops that can lead to more erosion in the park and uncontrollable speeds
when bikers ride down them. “They’re just rock cliffs, basically,” he said.
One of the goals of the Weatherford Mountain Bike Club is to consolidate
the usable bandit trails throughout the park and keep them from becoming
steep slopes, Goodman said.
“[They] want to take those and make them maintainable trails and not washouts, where we can develop some switchbacks and things like that, and we
control the speed of the trails through the way of development versus them just
being bandit trails,” Goodman said. “Those were some of the things we liked as
a city, looking at it as there are some issues that need to be addressed in there
and this is maybe a way to get a volunteer group in that’s under our control that
can maintain it.” Goodman said there’s nothing about the potential agreement
involving “high-speed bicycle trails or anything like that; it’s just developing
more trails through the park and actually having organized trails that aren’t the
currently unmaintained bandit trails. It’s the same type of system that we have
with other [groups] such as the Chandor Foundation; they’re out fundraising to
try to develop a new project at Chandor, the city is just overseeing it and managing it [because] it’s on city property."
While the mountain bike club would be responsible for maintenance of the
trails, it would not give them any special rights for using the park for special or
competitive events, Goodman said, adding that if any event were to take place
in the park it would have to go through the special event process, which would
be reviewed by the city. If a bike event were approved, all necessary precautions would be taken, he added.
To address local concerns regarding individuals running timed trials in the
park, Goodman said, “mountain bikers might get out there on the trail and ride
the trails as fast as they can and post th V