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them from Rushville to Gordon. And our volunteers are just awesome.” Nearly everyone who helped form Cowboy Trail West in 2012 re- mains on the board. Ferguson, now in Arizona, still participates. This spring, she returned for the “Meet Ya in Clinton” ride, co-hosted with Nebraska Game and Parks to cele- brate the trail’s 30th anniversary. Riders met in Clinton, population 38, where dinner served by women at the town’s church warmed up cyclists after a cold, windy ride. The trail, Elwood said, has brought the community together. Whether it’s making sure the Warrior Expedition riders feel at home during the annual veterans ride on the Great American Rail- Trail ® (rtc.li/grt-warrior-exp) or building birdhouses to put on mile marker posts, someone steps up. Building Miles, Momentum and a Mountain Bike Track In Chadron, a group is working to match the energy—and mile markers—of the Cowboy Trail West nonprofit. George Ledbetter, treasurer of the Northwest Nebraska Trails Association (NNTA, nwnebraskatrails.com), was inspired by South Dakota’s George
S. Mickelson Trail (rtc.li/mickelson- trail), which he lived by in the Black Hills, to create a rail-trail in Chadron after meeting others who shared the idea. “We’d seen what Cowboy Trail West had done with the Cowboy Trail and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get our end going,’” he said. With Nebraska Game and Parks having recently decked the bridges between Rushville and mile marker 400, the trail’s western terminus, and surfacing tentatively set for 2026, Ledbetter said he’s excited to ride the first new section of the Cowboy Trail in years. “That was what first spurred us on with our organization, was to get that part done,” he said. The NNTA is now focused on a 5-mile gap between the Cowboy Trail and Chadron. Later this year, Ledbetter said, the city plans to seek bids for the first mile of the Cowboy Trail connection. This effort is supported by a $178,000 federal Recreational Trails Program grant, a matching contribution from Dawes County’s tourism board and a grant from RTC. Meanwhile, Cowboy Trail West has helped with mowing and spray- ing, even sharing a steel-cut mile marker template. Ledbetter’s group raised funds by selling signage sponsorships to local businesses supporting the Cowboy Trail.
While that progresses, Ledbetter and a few cyclists cut a temporary path with permission from Nebraska Northwestern Railroad. “We bought a string trimmer, and we went out and mowed a path, and we’re doing a weekly Saturday morning ride,” he said. By the end of summer, they think they’ll have a usable mountain bike connector all the way to the start of the official Cowboy Trail to tide them over. “It’s kind of like we’re out here in the middle of nowhere,” he rea- soned. “So, let’s just do it ourselves.”
Cory Matteson is a contributor to Rails to Trails magazine and the TrailBlog. He lives in Springfield, Missouri, where he specializes in communications and journalism.
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