A minor mystery solved regarding the Greenways Trail Map

February 3 I sent an email to an employee of the BCCD that I have corresponded with before. Mostly the email was asking about improving hiker accessibility across the creek at the west end of the horse trail inside Kinnikinnick Creek Conservation Area and maybe some kind of action on getting hiker access to the horse trail that currently extends from Roland Olsen Forest Preserve in Winnebago County to KCCA. My understanding is the horse trail from ROFP to KCCA is something some horse people arranged with the landowners.

I got a real shock in his reply about the horse trail inside of KCCA, but that is stuff for another post.

Part of his reply referred to the trail between ROFP and KCCA as part of their master plan, but I suspect anything happening there would require collaboration with the horse people (among others). The document did not say so, but I suspect the chance of getting such collaboration approaches nil.

I sent him this JPG which is part of a map published by the Rockford Metropolitan Agency for Planning showing a trail exiting out of the SW corner of KCCA headed toward ROFP.

He replied back that it is a mistake in the map made by the contractor that created it and that he was forwarding it to whoever is in charge of fixing the map so it gets fixed in the online version. I did not even know there was an online version. He said it was at WINGIS.

I went to the WINGIS Greenways web site and sure enough there is the map. The PDF version showing the trail that is not open to the public is there. I found the online version as well by clicking on the link. Maybe I am not using it right, but I don't see much of anything in the way of trails on the online version at all. There is not even a legend symbol for them. Perhaps a work in progress. There does seem to be a page that loads for a split second before it goes to the online map. Maybe that page configures how the map is displayed, but I can't seem to see the page long enough to do any good.

It is curious how a contractor would even know about the trail segment in the first place. Unless one knows about it, one would not even know to look there for a trail. It is very hard to see in the overhead imagery I have seen, although if you have a good imagination and know there is a trail that extends from ROFP to KCCA you might be able to "see" such a trail in Google Earth or similar overhead images.