The Tennessee River Gorge Trust (TRGT) manages over 17,000 acres of land in and around the Chattanooga, Tennessee area. TRGT’s most recent adventure, Aetna Mountain, has them adding more singletrack to Chattanooga.
Phase one added four miles of new trail, and phase two will add another four miles, for a total of eight. However, due to the unique character of each trail, TRGT tells us it is really more like 16 miles.
From Nature Conservancy offshoot to trail-building powerhouse
“We started in the early ‘80s under the umbrella of the Nature Conservancy,” TRGT Executive Director Eliot Berz told us. “Then, in ‘86, we became an independent 501 (c) (3).”
Like other land trust organizations, TRGT focuses on land conservation and management. While Berz explained that land conservation will always be their “bread and butter,” growth in the organization over the last decade has enabled them to devote more attention to public access to their properties…