Only precious few projects can claim humble origins with large, unanticipated outcomes. Twenty-two years ago, the UK Cooperative Extension Service helped launch a simple footpath along Pine Mountain. At the time, the thought was that it would help showcase the region and serve as a nature-based tourism catalyst. With the project recently achieving a 60-mile milestone by connecting the Breaks Interstate Park in Pike County to the Kingdom Come State Park in Letcher and Harlan Counties, it seemed fitting to recognize some of the unexpected payoffs.

The trail has become a nature classroom, with many school groups and 4-H Clubs using its scenery and diversity of plant life to teach future Kentuckians the value of our mountain landscapes. It has been used as a volunteer project opportunity for those recovering from addiction at local substance abuse treatment facilities as well as citizens engaged in the Extension-supported Master Naturalist program. It has served as the regional focus for the Kentucky TrailTown Initiative, where communities receive grant funds to connect their communities to the Pine Mountain Trail, thereby benefitting their towns with increased recreation, fitness, and tourism offerings. On this vein, Letcher County Tourism has written $1.4 million in grants that are related to the program, of which $135,000 has been currently awarded. In Pike Co., the Breaks Interstate Park has received $700,000 through grants and donations and has a reserve fund of another $600,000 to build North America's longest footbridge to connect the Park to the Pine Mountain Trail. The project has been bid out and is expected to be completed in 2022. This one off-shoot alone highlights the value of this single UK Extension outreach and the ways that it bears tangible fruit far beyond imagination in our local communities. It further shows just how committed UK and Extension are to the corners of the Commonwealth.