The Granger Path: the volunteers' network

FRIENDS OF GRANGER PATHS · PHASE I 2011– · FIVE OF TWENTY-ONE MILES BUILT

The place's third park-maker is not a government at all: the Friends of Granger Paths, a local volunteer group, in the county's own project language "a local volunteer group promoting a healthier, connected community," working in cooperation with St. Joseph County. Their first phase was the Adams Road Path — funded in the Winter 2011 grant cycle of Bikes Belong (the national bicycle advocacy fund) together with a Safe Routes to School grant — a multi-use path meant, in the grant record's words, to link "two elementary schools to an existing bike path and join to six subdivisions, a local shopping center, and a library," allowing "more than 950 children to walk or bike to school safely for the first time." The second phase, the Adams Trail Extension from Fir Road to Elm Road, went forward as a county project through the Indiana Department of Transportation: the county's September 2013 request for engineering proposals prices construction at an estimated $822,500, eighty percent of it federal Transportation Alternatives money, with a construction letting then expected in 2015.

The network as it stands is five built miles of a twenty-one-mile vision, on the trail record's count: three miles run adjacent to Adams Road, between Mary Frank Elementary School and Gumwood Road — the trail itself stops short of Gumwood, and the asphalt golf-cart path of the Juday Creek course closes the last three-tenths of a mile — and a perpendicular section runs along Gumwood Road from Toscana Park to the Michigan border, and continues beyond it. The path touches both township parks and runs through the Elm Road ground, on the trustee's and the township's records, and the Elm Road park was sited, in the trustee's own conception, "just a short distance from a new Granger path extension." The name itself prints as the record gives it, in both numbers: the township writes of the Granger Path, singular — the walking and cycling course of the place — while the network, its Friends, and the national trail registry write Granger Paths, plural, one name for the whole twenty-one-mile design of which five miles stand.

Sources:

1. Bikes Belong / PeopleForBikes, Winter 2011 grant cycle, and Bicycle Retailer, February 17, 2011 — the Adams Road Path as the Friends' first phase: the schools, subdivisions, shopping center and library it joins; the 950 children; the Safe Routes to School grant.
2. St. Joseph County, INDOT request for proposals, September 2013 (in.gov) — Granger Paths Phase II, the Adams Trail Extension from Fir Road to Elm Road, Des #1382797: the county–Friends cooperation, the $822,500 estimate, the eighty-percent federal share, the 2015 letting expectation.
3. TrailLink, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy registry — Granger Paths: five miles complete of the twenty-one-mile vision; the Adams Road three miles and the Gumwood section to the state line; concrete surface.
4. Granger Gazette, August 2022, and the Sports leg of this build — the path's touch on both township parks and its course through the Elm Road ground; the singular name in township usage.