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Starved Rock trail improvements about half finished · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  Starved Rock Trail Improvements about half finished Written by Tom Collins This
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  article is being read by an automated voice, brought to you by
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  Everlet. An eighteen million dollar project to improve trails at Starved Rock
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  State Park will will not be finished by New Year's, but park
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  officials hope to announce a new round of trail reopenings by Thanksgiving.
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  Monty Bernardoni, Site Superintendent for Starve Rock and Matthew Essen State Parks,
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  said. Friday that workers have made substantial progress on the trails and
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  hope to have a more complete outlook by Thanksgiving. The revised completion
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  date is june first. I would say we're over fifty percent completed
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  for sure, Bernardoni said. There are a few things we need to
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  tie up to get that percentage higher, and it will obviously continue
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  into next year. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources had launched into
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  a 33.8 million program of upgrades. While about half those
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  funds were allocated for the sewage treatment plant and infrastructure that doesn't
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  directly affect tourism, the other half was allocated for trail
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  improvements Some of the improvements were urgently needed. Bernardoni said many of
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  the materials used on marked trails had reached the end of their
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  life cycles, such as wooden beams, and work was needed to ensure
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  safety and prevent additional erosion. The trail improvements have been needed for
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  a long time. Some trails were worse than others, said Matthew Klein,
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  president of the
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  Starve Rock Foundation. For example, Tonti Canyon has been closed for years
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  due to poor conditions and an unsafe bridge. Recently the new bridge
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  was airlifted into place in three pieces, and it's a huge upgrade.
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  Visitors are going to love the new trail to Tonti Canyon and
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  large bridge. While the project was loosely slated for completion by year's
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  end, two factors complicated that timetable. The first was Mother Nature. The
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  calendar year was dotted with dry spells, but also deluges that kept
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  workers off the trails, even though temperatures generally were favorable for outdoor
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  work. We've had mild temperatures, only a good couple of weeks of
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  extreme heat, so it wasn't terrible weather this summer, Bernardoni said. Overall
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  we've had good weather conditions. The second issue is the park itself.
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  Starved Rock, is teeming with native plants and sandstone that required workers
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  to tiptoe around sensitive areas. I recently had the opportunity to visit
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  some of the trails being improved, Klein said. Between challenging weather and
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  difficult terrain, it's understandable how improvements are taking slightly longer than planned.
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  I also remind visitors that it's been decades since this scale of
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  a project has occurred at Starved Rock, and it'll be worth the
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  wait. One unintended consequence of the project was a decline in tourism.
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  While Starved Rock remains on pace to welcome two million visitors, 2026
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  is shaping up to be the slowest in thirteen years. Bernardoni lamented
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  the trail closures and disruption to visitors, though it did provide workers
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  with the space to make hay during the otherwise crowded summer months.
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  It's unfortunate that we don't have the rising numbers in terms of
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  tourism, but it did help with our project going forward.