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News, Action Alerts & REsources
Scramble Area is Proposed Trailhead for ATVs on North Shore State Trail and Superior Hiking Trail, 10/14/09
Say "No!" to ATVs on the Superior Hiking Trail, 10/13/09
Say "No" to ATVs on the North Shore State Trail, 10/7/09
Lake County determined to allow ATVs on a portion of the North Shore State Trail in violation of rules and law. MRR data request, citing the North Shore Trail Master Plan and Minnesota statute, calls on DNR to intervene. 9/16/09
Action Alert!: Say "No!" to ATVs on the North Shore State Trail, 7/18/09
Action Alert!: Contact Minnesota House Environment Committee Members to say "No!" to House File 59 and conversion of the North Shore State Trail to ATV use 1/24/07
DNR moving on North Shore ATV trail report OUTDOORS: Draft indicates project to make trail suitable for ATVs would require flattening about 100 hills. Duluth News Tribune, 1/26/06
ATV Use on the North Shore State Trail - Feasibility Study, Mn DNR, 1/17/06
Map of North Shore State Trail (Large document - 650 K - may be slow to download)
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Protecting Minnesota's North shore
As with other state trails in other parts of the state, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wants to convert the North Shore State Trail to ATV use to provide the "backbone of the DNR's off-highway vehicle system in the region" (Tom Peterson, Trails and Waterways Division, DNR, Two Harbor's Office.) The goal is to designate a web of local publicly funded ATV trails off of the state trail.
While proponents of the proposed "I-35" for ATVs on the North Shore claim conversion of the state trail would "concentrate use on an improved trail which would minimize land disturbances on...public and private lands" (St. Louis Co. Resolution No. 785) the opposite is in fact true. Conversion of the North Shore State Trail to ATV use, like conversion of the Taconite, Arrowhead and other state trails will disburse ATV and other off-road vehicle use far and wide on public and private land through development of a web of off-road vehicle routes and scramble areas. For this reason, protecting the North Shore State Trail from conversion to ATV use is the first and most important step in protecting the North Shore from the many unwanted effects of ATVs, dirt-bike motorcycles and four-wheel drive trucks.
As part of previous plans to convert the North Shore State Trail the DNR has proposed a "scramble area" on the Superior Hiking Trail in Cook County and a four-wheel drive truck challenge area adjacent to the Boundary Waters Wilderness. Eleven scramble areas ("high use areas, designated for random cross-country OHV use...250 - 3000 acres. Area should be rolling with steep slopes and forested. Smnaller scramble areas 5 to 40 acres may be provided in conjunction with developed trails." "FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MANAGING OFF HIGHWAY VEHICLES, P. 22, MNDNR, 1997) have at one time been planned for Nothern Minnesota. (The DNR plan, once available on the DNR website at
http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/input/mgmtplans/ohv/old/plans
/reg2ohvplan_draft.pdf
has been removed from the DNR website.) It remains the DNR's intention to develop a web of ATV, dirt-bike motorcycle and four-wheel drive truck routes and scramble areas in Northeast Minnesota and statewide. On the North Shore we begin by protecting the North Shore State Trail.
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