Pickens, Easley officials break ground for Doodle Trail

PICKENS – The ceremonial gold shovels were turned, the speeches were made, and now it's full speed ahead for the Pickens County Doodle Trail.

The mayors and city councils of Easley and Pickens did the honors on Thursday in front of one of the old trains that used to run on the Doodle Line before it was abandoned, sold to the two cities and now sits just months away from becoming a walking-biking trail connecting the two municipalities.

If the weather cooperates, the 7.4-mile trail should be ready for use on Memorial Day weekend, officials said.

"This is a big day for the city of Easley and the city of Pickens," Easley Mayor Larry Bagwell told the crowd of about 50 who gathered for the event.

The two towns are bitter rivals on the football field, said Bagwell, a former coach of the Easley Green Wave, but they worked together for more than three years to make this project happen.

"We've had some ups and downs, but in my mind it's going to be worth it in the long run," he said.

Pickens Mayor David Owens said this project is "testament" to the cooperative relationship between the two cities.

Then he suggested a bet: The mayor of the city whose team loses the football game this year will have to walk the trail from one end to the other.

"We do have a new football coach just announced, so this year will be our year," he said.

Bagwell leaned in and chortled, "We haven't named one yet, but I bet we'll beat you."

All rivalry aside, the two cities are looking forward to reaping some of the kinds of benefits that Greenville and Travelers Rest have seen with the coming of the Swamp Rabbit Trail, another rails-to-trail project.

More than a dozen cyclists rode their bikes from Easley City Hall to Pickens to show their support for the new trail.

"It's amazing what bike-and-trail systems do for a community – healthy lifestyle, track businesses, food businesses that are associated with that same lifestyle," said Tim Granger, a Pickens resident and member of the Greenville Spinners bicycling club.

"You know, with the Swamp Rabbit in Greenville, there were a lot of people that were skeptical for a lot of years," he said.

The popularity of the Swamp Rabbit Trail grows every year. The latest impact study said that more than 500,000 people used the trail from July 2012 to June 2013.

Kevin Mitchell from Greenville, who rode his bike to Pickens for the event, said the health benefits of the trail are more important than the potential business impact.

"We are basically a classically obese society," he said. "And it's amazing to go out there (on the Swamp Rabbit Trail) on a Saturday or Sunday and see how many people are out there walking the dogs or riding. This trail is going to do the same thing for this community."

"I think it's going to be a big impact for us," Owens said.

Pickens recently developed a bike park and greenway downtown and plans to put in bike lanes to connect the Doodle Trailhead, at State 8 and East Cedar Rock Road, with downtown just a block away.

Easley has a greater challenge in connecting its trailhead, at Fleetwood Drive, with downtown about a half-mile away.

Bagwell has assigned a committee of city council members headed by Baptist Easley Hospital CEO Michael Batchelor to recommend a route for the connector trail and the design of the trailhead.

Preliminary plans for Easley's "Doodlehead" called for a small park and picnic area, with a couple of boxcars from the old railroad. Owens said Pickens hasn't settled on a design for its trailhead, on two acres at the former railroad headquarters.

Bagwell envisions connecting the trail from downtown to a greenway that would run all the way to the J.B. "Red" Owens Recreation Complex on the other end of town.

On the Pickens end, it could someday connect with trails in the mountains, he said.

The cities split the $500,000 cost of buying the old rail line and the $1.9 million for paving and designing the trail. The bonds they issued will be paid back out of hospitality taxes.

King Asphalt of Liberty is doing the paving, and Alta Planning + Design did the design work. The project includes repairing two bridges and installing fences. The construction actually began two weeks before the groundbreaking ceremony, Bagwell said.

Donny "Doodle" Sims, general manager of the Pickens Railway, which sold the property to the cities and ran a railroad on it until about three years ago, said he pitched the idea of turning it into a trail to Owens years ago.

"We was around the campfire one night, and I said, 'David, one day the railroad is going to shut down. You need to make this thing a bicycle trail,'" Sims told The Greenville News. "And he really perked up to the idea. And seeing what happened in Greenville with the Swamp Rabbit…everybody got on board."

Then he took the idea to Easley.

"I went to the mayor of Easley's office and sat down one day and said, 'we want to sell the railroad,'" he recalled. "He kind of laughed. He said, 'you do?' I said, 'yeah, it needs to be a bicycle trail.'

"They kind of warmed up to it."

Although it abandoned its Pickens-to-Easley line after years of trying to find industrial customers to use it, the Pickens Railway still operates a line in Anderson County, where it moves more than 3,000 cars a year, Sims said.

The Doodle Line was built in 1889 and the train was called the "Doodle" because it couldn't turn around in Pickens and had to run backwards on its way back to Easley, like a doodlebug.

Even though he was the earliest advocate for the rails-to-trail plan, he has mixed feelings about its coming to fruition.

"I wish the railroad could have been up and running still," he said, "but since we didn't have the industry, this is the perfect thing for it."