Iron County ATV/UTV trails to open Friday

By ZACHARY MARANO

zmarano@yourdailyglobe.com

Hurley — At the Iron County Forestry and Parks Committee meeting last week, department head Eric Peterson said they anticipated that the county ATV/UTV trails would open by the end of the month. On Monday, officer manager and trail coordinator Tara Krall confirmed that they will indeed open at 8 a.m. on Friday.

“Please stay on marked ATV/UTV trails and routes, as off trail riding is trespassing and can cause loss of trail use.  Be aware of changing trail conditions due to wind or rain,” Krall said in an email announcement.

Also at the May 10 meeting, Peterson said that the Lake of the Falls County Park in Mercer opened in the first week of the May. He said that Schomberg Park in Hurley, Weber Lake in Iron Belt and Saxon Harbor in Saxon would officially open next week and they opened on Monday.

Peterson said that new docks, sidewalks and a pavilion are going to be built at Saxon Harbor by the end of the month, as well as a new pavilion at Weber Lake. He said that spring maintenance on the forest roads will begin early next month.

The snowmobile trails in Iron County closed on March 21. Looking back, Peterson said that they had “a good, long snowmobile season” in winter 2021-2022. However, there were 32 reported accidents and two fatalities in the county.

The forestry department was planning to acquire some land in the county owned by Xcel Energy, but it recently came to light that they were unlikely to receive one of the two Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources grants that was going to be used to fund the acquisition.

Peterson said that department was going to have the land owned by Xcel appraised for an estimated $30-40,000 and if they can’t pay for the acquisition without the grant monies, the county would have spent the money on the appraisal for nothing.

Before moving forward, Peterson said that he wanted to bring the land appraisal to the Iron County Finance Committee as this project could cost the county a significant amount of money. The committee approved Peterson’s request to discuss this potential land acquisition at the next finance meeting in June.

The committee also:

—Granted permission for the department to advertise for their spring 2022 timber sale. This year, the department has 23 timber tracts. Peterson said that they have 2,251 acres and 859,000 feet of saw timber and 32,164 cords of pulp with an estimated value of $772,500. Bids can be mailed or delivered to the department building in Hurley and will be opened on June 9.

—Agreed to start charging a small convenience fee on credit card sales of permits and campground reservations.

—Heard a presentation by Rebekah Luedtke, executive director of the Wisconsin County Forest Administration, about the history of Wisconsin’s forests, the economic impacts of timber and recreation and the state responsibility to compensate counties for forest maintenance.