Looking at the sturdy bridges across the creek, wooden walks over rough ground and the carefully labeled trees, you’d never know the place used to be a dump. Literally.

Two sisters donated the land to the town years ago, but for a long time nobody did anything with it except toss junk on it.

Town Maintenance Manager Kim Cress said, “When we started on this trail, it was just a rough wooded area, useless. It was full of old appliances, pieces of old roofing and brush.”

Cleaning the place out and manicuring it into a nature trail started in February 1999, when teams of inmates from Rowan Correctional Center, along with Cress, Kevin Taylor and Robert Anderson, started hauling out junk and cutting brush. “We wanted to make it usable, because the town owned it,” Cress said.

Granite Quarry first explored the possibility of a nature trail in 1996, with help from Gidley and Associates, but the plan was not carried out because of other issues that arose.

The Town Board and staff worked with the Action for Community Teamwork Advisory Board to re-examine the project and decided to try again. It became a reality when the town received an Adopt-A-Trail grant from the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources.

Kevin Taylor, who no longer lives in Granite Quarry, wrote the grant proposal for the 4.5-acre property, which includes a natural spring and stream, over 50 different species of trees and a watershed and flood plain.

Developing it into a place for walking and picnicking took a huge amount of work. The creek was clogged up, which attracted mosquitoes, Cress said. Workers hauled out 29 truck loads of brush and wielded chainsaws, swings, Weedeaters, axes, “whatever it took,” Cress said.

It required six months just to get the property to where they could begin to refine the area; and even the day before the official opening, Cress was working to perfect the trail.

The finished project consists of over 30 labeled tree species, eight picnic tables in three picnic areas and three bridges that cross the stream.

Cress said many businesses helped make it all possible.

Cozart Lumber of Rockwell gave the town price breaks on materials for the wooden walkways; Vulcan Materials donated the bridges, 260 tons of rock dust for the walking trail and the use of a Bobcat; and Bost Trucking Company delivered the stone at no cost to the town.

When the worst of the brush was cleared out, workers found two granite picnic tables that had apparently been placed there many years earlier. Town Clerk Ann Sessom said they theorize that the sisters who donated the land to the town probably put in the tables in the 1950s.

Several loops along the trail give walkers little detours to get closer to some of the trees that the Forest Service identified and labeled. Many of them do not usually grow in this area. Cress said the Forest Service people thought the trail area was “just wonderful.”

And it’s not finished. The town will probably add grills and some benches in the future, and a gazebo is a possibility. Some patches of poison oak growing in the wild areas also need to be eradicated.

In the meantime, people are already finding the trail a good place to eat a sandwich or take a walk at lunch time. And it’s a pleasant place to read in early evening, as the temperature in the area, which sits lower than the road and land nearby, is noticeably cooler than in town. An older woman in a wheelchair asks her helper to leave her there in the wooded area to meditate.