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Pictured (l-r) are Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Parks and Trails Director Ann Pierce, local volunteer Vicky Tribon, Harmony Mayor Steve Donney and landowner Larry Peterson at the groundbreaking ceremony May 3 for the new Harmony Stateline Trail in Harmony. (Driftless Multimedia photo by Kathy Simpson)
The Harmony Economic Development Authority (EDA) held a golden-shovel groundbreaking ceremony to celebrate the start of construction extending the Harmony-Preston Valley state bike trail. The event was held May 3 in Harmony, Minn.
The new Stateline Trail will extend from Harmony’s southern city limits to the Iowa state line, with a spur to Niagara Cave in Minnesota’s southern Fillmore County. Construction will continue throughout the rest of 2024 and is anticipated to be finished in 2025. The project has received nearly $6 million in federal, state and local funding — including $5.5 million from the State of Minnesota, $235,000 from the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund and $15,000 from the Harmony Area Community Foundation.
This trail will connect Niagara Cave, which is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Fillmore County, with Harmony’s entertainment and tourism district, and be the first interstate trail to connect the state of Minnesota and Iowa. When Iowa finishes its connection to the Stateline Trail, users will be able to ride to Iowa destinations such as Cresco and Decorah, and north to destinations such as Preston, Lanesboro, Rushford via Minnesota’s Bluffland Trails System. Eventually plans call for this trail network to connect through Chatfield, to the local and state trails in Rochester to the north and eastward across the Mississippi to La Crosse, Wis.
The existing trail, which connects to Lanesboro and the rest of the current Bluffland Trails system along the Root River, runs between Harmony and Preston and was completed in 1998.
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