Category Archives: From the President

Commentary from Friends’ President

The Pumpkinvine Nature Trail effect

Posted on by March 7, 2018

I’ve lost track of the number of community meetings I’ve attended where the speakers praised trails like the Pumpkinvine as an important element in improving the quality of life in a community, along with good schools, meaningful jobs and a strong business community. One such meeting was at the Lerner Theatre several years ago when the president of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County, Pete McCowen, was promoting the Vibrant Communities initiative. In explaining the kind of initiatives the foundation was interested in promoting, he gave three examples of projects the Community Foundation had supported that had made a significant difference in our community’s quality of life: The Lerner Theater renovation and the creation of the Wellfield Botanical Garden in Elkhart and the birth of the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail.

I was pleased that the Pumpkinvine was on his list, but not really surprised because I’d heard the same comments in numerous other meetings about what factors make a town a desirable place to live. Surveys that measure what communities want put accessible places to walk and bike – what trails provide – near the top of the list. That’s where people want to live. One such ranking that uses these criteria is the annual “Best Places to Live” article in Money magazine.

Now our community has an opportunity to make our trails into an even better trail system. The story on page 10 of this newsletter introduces the Quaker Trace Trail, an off-road trail that supporters would like to see connect Elkhart, Bristol and Middlebury. If they are successful it would connect with the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail in Middlebury and (with the MapleHeart Trail from Goshen to Elkhart, form a 40+ mile, off-road loop around Elkhart County.

This loop promises to enhance the trail system in Elkhart County just as other additions to the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail have done, e.g., the MapleHeart connecting Goshen to Ox Bow County Park and Elkhart, the Abshire Trail and Monroe Street trails connecting the Pumpkinvine to the Elkhart County fair grounds and the Ridge Run Trail connecting the Pumpkinvine with Greencroft Middlebury, the Essenhaus and Northridge schools.

It is worth noting that trails have the support of many rural residents, as well as city folk. Last fall when the Friends of the Pumpkinvine contacted area Amish churches and asked for donations to support construction of the Pumpkinvine between County Road 20 and County Road 35, the Amish community responded with a generous contribution – a tangible way of saying that they support this extension of the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail. This community, which uses bicycles more than any other group for transportation, recognizes that the Pumpkinvine improves the quality of rural as well as urban life. 

Amish Directory now includes the Pumpkinvine

Posted on by March 10, 2018

From the president

Recently I purchased a copy of the Indiana Amish Directory 2017: Elkhart, LaGrange, and Noble Counties, a 1090-page volume edited by Joas and Freda Miller from Middlebury, Ind. In the forward, the editors say: “Our goal for the Directory is to make it a reliable source of birth, marriage, and death date information. Also we try to provide accurate addresses, church district maps, and locations of Amish homes, schools, and cemeteries.” And they have succeeded in a grand way: the book is a combination of genealogy, atlas, church history and labor statistics – a comprehensive overview of the Old Order Amish community in northern Indiana.

The book is organized by church districts, and each district includes a map showing the county roads, with numbers keyed to a list of names on the opposite page that indicates where families live. The map also shows the location of the Amish schoolsA map of an Amish district copied from the Amish Directory. and a few stores relevant to the Amish community.

I wanted a copy of the directory because I’d heard a rumor that for the first time the maps of church districts would also include the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail. To me that seemed significant: if the directory included the Pumpkinvine, it would indicate that the Pumpkinvine had become an important for the Amish community. And a map showing where the Pumpkinvine was in relation to homes would help anyone who wanted to purchase property know where that property was in relationship to the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail.

How times have changed. I can’t help recalling the beginnings of our efforts to convert the abandoned Penn Central railroad into a multi-use trail in the early 1990s when people told me that the Amish community would be solidly against a bike trail due to concerns about privacy and vandalism. In other words, they wouldn’t want a bike trail anywhere near where they lived.

This map sends the opposite message: it helps people know where to buy property, if they want to be close to the trail.

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