No Moss Growing on the 212-Mile Singing River Trail

Aristotle once wrote, “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous”. 

When the Land Use Committee of Huntsville’s Launch 2035 dedicated the first quarter mile of North Alabama’s original 70-mile-long Singing River Trail in late 2019, the idea of physically connecting Huntsville to Madison, Athens, and Decatur was quite marvelous – in fact, based on a $225,000 Master Plan, it was the most ambitious legacy project ever undertaken in North Alabama.

The original plan revealed a route starting at Bob Wallace Avenue in Huntsville that followed Highway 20 and Madison Boulevard west, bearing south at Zierdt Road to Triana, and crossing over Countyline Road to Mooresville. Another leg bore north off Madison Boulevard towards Belle Mina, and dipped south to the river at County Road, crossing into Decatur and turning north along Highway 31 towards Athens. 

It was an ambitious plan. It was a marvelous plan for North Alabama.

In mid-2020, the Singing River Trail brought in historian John Kvach as its first executive director and it immediately grew into a 150-mile, 8-county project connecting North Alabama from Bridgeport and Scottsboro, to Sheffield, bringing it within 16 miles of the Natchez Trace.

Today, the SRT is comprised of a 212-mile truly marvelous natural greenway system, with new branches growing out from its spine in all directions, all the time.

“In one year, we added Jackson, Marshall, Lawrence, Lauderdale, and Colbert Counties to the original Limestone, Madison, and Morgan County group,” said Kvach. “We didn’t get bigger by happenstance We listened to the people and communities who wanted to be part of something big. We didn’t react, we acted in the spirit of Launch 2035. No boxes, silos, or cartographer’s lines holding us back.”

On October 18, during the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama Line-Off Ceremony, Jason Puckett, president of Toyota Alabama presented Kvach with a $25,000 donation in support of the Singing River Trail in recognition for SRTs commitment to mobility and environmental preservation.

Kvach will be the featured speaker at the Madison Chamber of Commerce’s Quarterly Luncheon at the Best Western Plus on Madison Blvd. on November 18.

Looking back, it has been like watching the entire Tennessee Valley region, knit itself back together again, to how it was before there were towns and cities. It has been like nature reaching out like twining vines to reclaim the region’s vast network of natural resources including cultural areas, recreation spots, nature reserves, forests, lakes, rivers, and streams.

Looking at the SRT in terms of links in a chain, SRT has undeniable benefits for almost every community along its path. The regional project has buy-in from community leaders and businesses all along the trail, including small, sometimes impoverished communities that will greatly benefit from the industry, tourism, culture, and jobs SRT will stimulate.

In a last-minute burst of enthusiasm, the SRT team, led by Kvach, recently applied for Phase I of the Federal Building Back Better Regional Challenge grant that offers $500,000 towards technical planning for a regional project. They have not received an answer yet, but the pitch is compelling.

The Singing River Trail is using the best of the Tennessee Valley’s natural assets, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit to focus on outdoor recreation and tourism as the accelerator for the Singing River Valley concept, which serves as a center for health and wellness, economic development, tourism, entrepreneurship, active transportation, and Native American heritage equal to or greater that the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, or the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee! 

According to the grant proposal, the Singing River Valley regional concept would ultimately “…become the final piece of a larger Appalachian Regional Corridor that extends from Maine to Alabama with North Alabama the southern terminus for a line of outdoor and tourism opportunities that start in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, extend into the Carolinas along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and continue into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee”. 

From the earliest days of the SRT concept, the past and future were destined to merge in a historical and high-tech way.

With the preservation of nature, and the history and culture of the region at its foundation, it will not work today in our high tech word without technology.

The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the North Alabama Technology Coalition created the North Alabama Entrepreneurship and Innovation Coalition to evaluate and develop a strategic plan for building a connective entrepreneurial ecosystem across the SRT trail system that will market the region’s assets, and engage key stakeholders in the development of the SRT, with recommendations for enhanced outdoor recreation, agritourism, and agriculture tech innovation – all of which will take advantage of the physical landscape to spur economic growth. 

The coalition will act like a catalyst for future collaborations between regional partners, inspire entrepreneurship, and interact with local, state, regional, and national entities to create opportunities for North Alabama innovators.