The president of the Bellwood-Antis Public Library was a bit skeptical when she first heard about plans for the Logan Valley Trail.

Eileen Conlon became a believer after learning how the recently completed Phase 1 section would negotiate two major obstacles in Bellwood — the Norfolk Southern mainline tracks via an early 2000s pedestrian bridge and Bells Gap Run via a newly constructed pedestrian bridge.

The $2.1 million project, moreover, was engineered and built entirely with money from PennDOT, the Department of Community and Economic Development and Southern Alleghenies Planning and Development Commission — although the township paid for real estate purchases and easements, according to Antis Township Manager Doug Brown, along with a news release on the project — which officials dedicated at a ceremony on Thursday.

Now that the 0.8-mile section between the Route 865 overpass on Main Street and Becker Road is built, Conlon can see how it all “makes sense,” she said in the library Thursday afternoon. “I’m hoping it will be an asset to the area,” she added.

Laura Weaver, owner of the Main Street Barber Shop, is a trail fan.

She plans to take advantage, especially by taking her young son, who likes to be outdoors.

She’s seen families walking and biking on the trail over the last couple months.

Even people in wheelchairs are using it, Weaver said.

The new trail should bring outsiders in, said Hope Ray, Bellwood secretary-treasurer.

It will likely help area restaurants, and it might even help her barber shop, because more people may notice it, Weaver said.

“I’m happy to see the town making things more beautiful,” Weaver said.

Library Director Jessica Ford Cameron plans to use the trail to help the library.

She’s been raising funds to construct a better backdoor on the library building, so there will be decent access for trail users.

The trail runs along the alley immediately in back.

The library hopes to provide a refreshment stop for trail users — with drinks and snacks for sale, restrooms and places to relax out of the heat and cold, according to Cameron and Conlon.

The trail connection should help increase awareness of the library and its services, Conlon said.

The scope of those services is larger than in the past, as libraries are no longer only about books, Conlon said.

Providing those services can help ensure that libraries are able to keep their doors open, she said.

Cameron also wants to create “story walks” along the trail.

Those can consist of a series of semi-permanent or permanent stations, resembling historical markers, each with succeeding passages from books or information on local geology, trees and animals, Cameron said.

It’s also possible to create story walks with temporary posts and signage, perhaps using laminated paper sheets, she said.

Story walks “have been a dream of mine for years,” Cameron said.

The access to nature that the trail helps provide is especially important nowadays, given our society’s heavy dependence on electronic devices, Cameron said.

“Nature therapy is a very real thing,” Cameron said. It helps people “decompress,” she added.

One Antis resident who was at the library Thursday isn’t pleased about the project, because in the current economy, with people struggling to make ends meet, “I can’t see the sense,” the resident said.

“All that money, it’s ridiculous,” the resident said. “It should have been spent on more necessary things.”

But if the local community hadn’t gone after the grant money for the project, some other community would have walked away with it, Conlon said.

“Everybody wants their piece of the pie,” she said. “If you have the vision, you need to go for it.”

As she ended her conversation about Phase 1, Ray put her thumb up.

“It’s a big deal for Bellwood,” Conlon said.

Phase 1 is all blacktop, which will help prevent washouts in the section that is in the Bells Gap Run floodplain, Brown said.

Phase 2, which includes removal of a large hill of waste coal, should be done in the spring, and will take the trail from Becker Road to just short of Lower Riggles Gap Road.

The removal of the waste coal is being funded by a $1.3 million Abandoned Mine Lands grant. The work is being administered by the state Department of Environmental Protection. A former coal hauling road will become the Phase 2 segment of the trail.

Phase 3 will require a means to get over or under Lower Riggles Gap Road and on to the area of North 20th Street in Juniata.

(Article appeared in the Altoona Mirror, by William Kibler)