The State Journal
June 2007
By Pam Kasey
pkasey@statejournal.com
MORGANTOWN - New boater services offered along on the Monongahela River are reflected in an updated Upper Mon Water Trail brochure.
"There are a lot of new docks," said Peggy Pings, who spearheaded the collaborative brochure project. Pings serves as outdoor recreation planner for the Rivers and Trails Program of the National Park Service.
Designed with boaters in mind, the brochure maps river geography and details riverside services from the mouth of the Mon at Fairmont - river mile 128, counting from Pittsburgh up - downriver to Pennsylvania's Ten Mile Creek at river mile 65.
The trail encompasses six slackwater pools that boaters navigate by "locking through" at the dams.
Since the first brochure was released four years ago, Morgantown, Star City and Point Marion have added major docking facilities on the Upper Mon, Pings said, through funding provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Boating Infrastructure Grant program.
"Those Boating Infrastructure Grant docks are specifically for non-trailerable boats," she explained. Non-trailerable boats are longer than 26 feet.
"The idea is to put these docks in so houseboats and sternwheelers and people that are touring the river can come to all the communities and have a safe place to dock."
The addition of the BIG docks opens the Upper Mon to boaters from not just Pittsburgh, she said, but also "from Charleston, Huntington, Parkersburg, Wheeling" and all the way down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
The Upper Mon Water Trail was established to serve three main purposes, Pings said.
"One is that it's intended to be a historic and ecological trail," she said. "We wanted people to learn about the communities along the river."
Those functions are served by brochure pages about the history and ecology of this section of the river as well as by short descriptions of points of historical interest along the trail.
"The second goal was to increase economic development for businesses in all these little river towns," she said.
To that end, a sidebar organized by river mile lists telephone numbers for riverside attractions, restaurants, inns, marinas, supermarkets and campgrounds.
"And then the third is that we want to encourage multi-day trips on the river," she said.
The brochure's clear presentation of the wide range of services and activities along the trail and the inclusion on its map of other recreational features like parks and rail-trails promotes that purpose.
The brochure is a project of the Morgantown Area Chamber of Commerce Vision 2020 Monongahela River Recreation and Commerce Committee, with support from the Greater Morgantown Community Trust, the Greater Morgantown Convention and Visitors Bureau, Monongahela River Trails Conservancy, Nathanael Greene Historical Foundation, the National Park Service, the Upper Monongahela River Association and the towns and counties along the Upper Monongahela River.
Pam Kasey, North-central reporter