New trail section, new trail center added to Glendalough State Park

By Heather Rule, photos provided

The addition of a new section of trail at Glendalough State Park created an entire loop within the park that is entirely off the road. It’s a six-mile trail inside the park, with about two miles added to it. The trail also connects to Battle Lake.

The new, 10-foot-wide paved trail is open to bicyclists and pedestrians, and visitors used the trail as early as Memorial Day 2024, taking in the scenes on the trail along the prairie and a couple of wetlands. The trail work was officially completed and finalized late last summer.

“It’s very scenic in and of itself,” said Jeff Wiersma, Glendalough State Park supervisor.

The park staff is still working on getting some vegetation to grow on the shoulder, though a lot of the seed washed out with last summer’s heavy rains.

In addition to the new path, Glendalough State Park has a new trail center with a new parking area that connects to the bike trail. The center has new restroom facilities (including four family-style restrooms), plus a large, multi-use space to add some interpretive displays over the next couple of years.

They’ll also have a concessionaire at the trail center that rents bicycles and watercraft, too.

The new trail center and its facilities will make the experience more convenient for park visitors. It was a much-needed addition, with the park seeing more than double the number of visitors over the past decade. The park has about 50,000 visitors a year before the trail went in, and now that number jumped to about 120,000 visitors per year. The Glendalough Park Partners and friends group helped get the project going and generate funding.

“This is a new space, but it’s to ease the pressure on the lodge area because that gets so much traffic,” Wiersma said. “The use of the park has grown immensely in the last year since the trail went in.”

The trail center building, located near the public water access, was completed in December 2024, with indoor furnishings work following. Landscaping work and tree planting will be completed this spring, along with adding tables, benches and furnishings for inside and outside the center.

The new trail center is a seasonal building and will be open May through October. There will be a grand opening on June 14, 2025.