Of course, Ronnie wouldn’t be able to build two new trails and begin a third without a little help from our friends – more than 250 of them! Even in a profoundly different year, an almost-impossible-to-fathom number of friends from our community volunteered more than 3,400 hours to help build and maintain trails, lead Discovery Sessions, share historical research and keep SCLT moving forward. For that, we say THANK YOU!

Once their voluntary conservation agreements are complete, these families will conserve about 675 acres of open space, wildlife habitat, and clean water in the Tongue River and Clear Creek valleys while ensuring working lands remain working. That will add to the 3,475 acres local families have already conserved across Sheridan County.

Fishing, painting, paddling, drawing, yoga, history tours, raffle races and more! This year’s Trailfest was a fantastically fun way for people to learn new ways to enjoy their community trails. It was a great partnership with The Dead Swede bike races, too. Mark your calendar for June 4 & 5 as Trailfest 2021 returns with free fun for everyone!

This incredible Community Enhancement Grant was approved to build “quality of life infrastructure” close to home. Backed by more than $130,000 raised locally and more than $100,000 more from the USFS and National Forest Foundation, the Red Grade Trails expansion will be built faster than anyone ever imagined!

This fall, the Big Goose Creek Walking Tour was added to the Historic Downtown Walking Tour created by Downtown Sheridan Association. This partnership highlights historic events that have occurred in and around the confluence of Big and Little Goose Creeks. Four more sites are on our guided walking tour and will be in a video on our website in the near future. You can take the tour this holiday season – or any season – by downloading the TravelStorysGPS app for your phone, tablet, computer or other connected device.

This Apsáalooke story of how the Bighorns got its name is one of many stories of our region’s history that will be included on three interpretive signs that will be placed along SCLT trails this summer. You’ll be able to learn about the history of Red Grade, Plains Indians’ connections to the land and the names and locations of mountain peaks and places in the forest while enjoying the outdoors in our beautiful Bighorns backyard.

Data that will, for the first time ever, shed light on the seasonal movements of mule deer in the northern Bighorns. In partnership with Wyoming Game & Fish, the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit, the University of Wyoming, The Nature Conservancy and Wyoming Migration Initiative, this study will help inform management decisions of the northern Bighorns herd. The goal is to have 130 collared this spring.

Those sites, along with five more outside of city limits, comprise the Tongue River Water Trail. This year, SCLT worked with Steady Stream Hydrology, EMIT and local landowners to remove “The Impaler,” and old irrigation diversion structure that was a major safety hazard for people floating Big Goose Creek. Thanks to our partners, it is far safer to enjoy the water around Sheridan.

That’s right! Thanks to those grants, there will be a small army of people building trail and developing three parking areas in the Bighorn National Forest this season. Among those will be contracted crews, an AmeriCorps crew that’s part of a partnership with Antelope Butte and overseeing it all will be Ronnie on a mini ex. And that’s just this coming year! Another five miles will be built in the future.

And along the way, you can stop at several other sites that are a part of Sheridan County’s coal mining history. This spring, the award-winning Black Diamond Byway tour was updated to include new information about Acme and the community’s work to reclaim the land around the former town and its namesake power plant. You can take the Black Diamond Byway tour on the TravelStorys GPS app or watch the virtual tour on our website, also a new addition in 2020.

We aim to help people discover new ways they can enjoy the outdoors. In 2020, we created a series of fun activities where people could learn a new skill to use or learn something new about the outdoors around them – in some cases, both. From geology to trail running, birding to history and a lot of mountain biking in between, more than 300 people participated in the first year of Discovery Sessions. Importantly, Discovery Sessions are free. We’re looking forward to even more fun in 2021!