It’s well known that Concord is home to some pretty sweet hiking and walking trails.
The collection of paths make up more than 70 miles of potential spots for leisure activity.
Well, you can now add close to five more miles to that total after the opening of the Broken Ground Trails a little over a week ago.
The city purchased 270 acres in 2013 that sit in the general area between Portsmouth Street and Curtisville Road.
“Part of (the purchase) was to build a trail system out there,” said Beth Fenstermacher, acting assistant city planner.
After the collection of two loops and three trails were laid out by the city’s forester, volunteers got to work.
It all began on May 18, and a little over five months later, 23 volunteers had put in 284 hours to clear the trails and mark them. Now all of you can reap the rewards.
“We had a lot of people hauling a lot of lumber far distances,” Fenstermacher said.
The trail network consists of the blue loop, the longest individual section at 2.3 miles that can be accessed from a parking area off Curtisville road, about a mile past Broken Ground School. The orange loop, a 1.5 mile portion of the network that you can get to from the Portsmouth Street parking lot, is the only other part of the trail that’s more than 1-mile. The final three sections consist of two trails that are 0.4 miles and another that’s 0.7 of a mile, make up quite the network to explore a new section of the city. A lot of the trails intersect so there are lots of different options.
“Some people may want to walk five miles, but not everybody does,” Fenstermacher said.
And in the winter, the trails can also be used for cross-country skiing.
For a complete map of the new trails, check out onconcord.com/DocumentCenter/View/8484.
Or you can go to one of the parking areas and pick a trail.
“We have temporary signs for now as people get used to it,” Fenstermacher said.
