Blazing The K&P Trail North To Verona And Beyond

May 02, 2013

On April 27, Anne Marie Young, the manager of Economic Sustainability at the County of Frontenac, led a group of 25 trail blazers in a clean up of the Verona section of the K&P Trail. The group, which included three families from the Kingston area, covered a six-kilometre strip of the trail from Bellrock Road to Craig Road. Young said the event, now in its fifth year, is focusing on the Verona section of the trail, which staff at the county hope to further develop by brushing, grading and finishing off with a layer of stone dust. “To date we at the county have so far developed the trail from the county border at Kingston, all the way north to Hartington and we hope to get all the way up to Craig Road in what will be Phase 2 of the project,” Young said when I spoke to her on a section of the trail behind Prince Charles Public School in Verona where she and her two grandsons were busy picking up trash.

The county began developing a trail plan in 2009 and in 2010 the trail committee put in a bridge at Millhaven Creek. In 2011 the committee's work focused on landowner and other paperwork issues and in 2012 the group developed the trail bed from Orser Road up to the Cataraqui Trail and then further north to Hartington. Young said she hopes this year to see the section of trail completed from Hartington up to Craig Road with the committee negotiating a trade of land with the school board so that the trail can continue through Verona to Craig Road.

Young said the county has two main reasons to see the trail completed: 1) for economic reasons, by attracting tourism to the area, which will help the smaller towns in the north by increasing business; and 2) offering a healthy outdoor activity to people within and outside of the community.

Young said that the biggest challenges facing the trail development have been funding and landowner issues. Regarding the latter Young said, “It's really a case of personally liking the trail or not. Some people are really happy to have a trail behind their property and others not so much.”

Young said that those landowner issues will become more apparent in the near future because as the trail heads north, especially between Tichborne and Sharbot Lake, certain sections are owned privately after having been sold off to individual property owners over the years. Young remains hopeful and said that in the coming years there will be a definite push to see the trail completed since 2017 marks the anniversary of the Trans-Canada Trail. She hopes that the county might receive an influx of funding with that anniversary date looming.