Sparta to Pick-up Walking Bridge Trail Project

The City of Sparta will pick-up the walking bridge trail project in the coming weeks.

City Administrator Chris Dorsey said the trail project started about a year ago.

“We got to the point where we decided that rather than having to force ourselves up through the woods to the top of the hill where the cemetery is because we have to stay ADA compliant,” Dorsey said. “We would rather come around the front side of the hill and come up on that side. Well, when we did that we crossed parcel lines. TDEC came out and said, ‘Whoa, we need to do another environmental study on that part of the project.'”

The city owns the property, but does not abandon the property lines, Dorsey said.

Sparta needed to complete various facets of the environmental study, including contacting the Corps of Engineers and the Historical Commission.

Since the project involves federal money passed through the state, the city also needed comments from surrounding Native American groups.

“Usually there is not much that comes back from them, because literally that whole area had been checked before. But they sent it back out and the only response we had during that was on the last day,” Dorsey said. “The Cherokee Nation just asked for a copy of the project map, just to make sure, again, that they had nothing within the boundaries. And immediately after they got the map they said, ‘No, we are good.'”

Now that the city completed the TDEC study, the trail should start to make progress, Dorsey said.

“We finally got everything turned back into them. Government works slowly sometimes, unfortunately,” Dorsey said. “So we are just very happy that they finally approved the trail as we now have it marked out. And our plan is to start on it in the next couple of weeks to complete the eastern side.”