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1976–PRESENT · THE STATE SYSTEM THAT MAKES A TRAIL EXIST
A designated trail is not a path but an arrangement, and Indiana's arrangement is printed whole in the state's own manual. The Indiana Snowmobile Trails Program began in 1976, in the words of the DNR's 2025–2027 program manual, "as a cooperative effort between Indiana's snowmobilers and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources," its intent "to provide public trails for snowmobilers to use in the pursuit of safe, healthful, outdoor recreation." The money is the riders' own: the manual states the program "is mostly funded by snowmobile registration fees paid by Indiana's snowmobile owners." Registration is law, not custom. Under Indiana Code 9-18.1-14-4 the fee to register an off-road vehicle or snowmobile is thirty dollars — $30 for a three-year registration, its decals expiring 31 January of the third year — and the fee "shall be deposited in the off-road vehicle and snowmobile fund established by IC 14-16-1-30." The operating law is IC 14-16-1 whole, the code the DNR map prints on Buffalo Run's face; since 1 January 2014 the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, not the DNR, has taken the registrations, and all snowmobiles purchased after 31 December 2003 must be registered, the revenue going, in the clubs' own summary of the statute, "to improve, maintain, and administer the motorized programs, properties, and trails." The ground the trails cross is mostly not public. The DNR's snowmobiling page states it plainly: "Most trails have been leased from private landowners for public use," and the manual prices the lease: clubs negotiate the leases directly with landowners — a responsibility the clubs took over in 2007 — at a lease rate of $75 per quarter-mile or $2 per acre, with the clubs carrying liability insurance of at least $1,000,000 per occurrence on leased ground. Cooperative agreements between club and Department pay the rest of the mechanism's costs: a preconstruction payment of up to $1,500, and $65 per mile of trail for construction and maintenance — "this includes the clearing, signing, and grooming of the trail," grooming defined in the manual as "the activity of producing smooth surface of snow with a uniform density through the use of mechanical equipment." The hands are volunteers. The club signs the leases, brushes and signs the course in the fall, posts it open or closed with the snow, and runs the groomer — the unpaid labor without which the fund's dollars buy nothing, because there is no state trail crew. That is the whole machine: a $30 triennial fee, a dedicated fund, a quarter-mile lease across a stranger's cornfield, a club's October clean-up day and a volunteer's night in the groomer. Buffalo Run exists because the Michiana Trail Riders Coalition works that machine in this county; Granger has no trail because no club works it here, no leases are signed here, and the estate the machine maintains stops, as the map shows, on the county's west side.
Sources:
- Indiana DNR, Snowmobile Trails Program Manual, 2025–2027: the 1976 cooperative beginning, registration-fee funding, the cooperative agreements, the $1,500 preconstruction payment, the $65-per-mile construction and maintenance payment, the lease rate of $75 per quarter-mile or $2 per acre, the clubs' lease responsibility from 2007, the $1,000,000 insurance minimum, and the definition of grooming — read whole.
- Indiana Code 9-18.1-14-4: the $30 registration fee and its deposit to the fund under IC 14-16-1-30; Indiana BMV registration pages: three-year registrations, BMV administration since January 2014, registration required for machines purchased after 31 December 2003.
- Indiana DNR, "Snowmobiling in Indiana": trails mostly leased from private landowners; the December-to-March posted-open season.