In 1995 I came back to South Carolina to be the State’s first Trails Coordinator. There was federal money available for grants (Recreational Trail Program) and The SC Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism (PRT) needed someone to set up the program. I was working for the Coronado National Forest at the time in Tucson, AZ. While a student at University of South Carolina in 1989 I wrote a thesis – SC Rail-Trail: Inventory and Prospect and Ron Carter, Director of Recreation for PRT supported my research. He is the one five years later we convinced me to come back. I wanted to do more than just run a grants program. I wanted a full-on trails program. We first tackled inventorying all the trails in the State as well as all the agencies and groups interested in trails. The internet was just coming on line so I bought the name www.sctrails.net and put everything out on the web. I had a website before PRT did. It amazes me that what we put together lasted in its design until 2017 when the Department changed it to a Google map of trails in the State.

One of my big efforts was an annual workshop to coincide with National Trails Day. My first was on rail-trails naturally. We held the workshop in North Augusta, SC and dedicated the North Augusta Greeneway as part of the weekend. This was a special weekend for me as Sandra and I had walked the abandoned ROW in 1989 while researching my thesis. Now to see it as a trail –  Pretty neat.

I put together a Powerpoint for the workshop. I had kept a paper copy. What you see here are scans of those pages.