Being able to explore West Virginia as a whole is really unique, and you can do all of that on a mountain bike.

(Biker yelps) Hi, my name is Brandon Doerner and I'm the lead fun officer, president of the Meeks Mountain Trail Alliance.

I was traveling quite a bit outside of West Virginia doing a lot of real estate development.

There's a group called the Hurricane Development Authority here in hurricane.

And a good friend of mine named Tony, he had asked me to join this meeting because he thought that with my background that it would be helpful for Hurricane.

And so I step into this first meeting with the Hurricane Development Authority.

And the first thing they're talking about is, oh, we've got this 15 acres and we want to build trails.

And, and Tony turns to me and basically says, well, Brandon, don't you know something about trails?

And so I got to thinking, wow, this may be an opportunity for us to build an asset right here in the city of hurricane.

And I thought, well, 15 acres isn't really going to do this.

So as a real estate guy, I'm looking at the map and I realize this family, which is the Meeks family, owns 600 acres around this 15 sat down with them and I said, listen, guys, I said, you know, as real estate guy, I manage 80,000 acres.

I've managed over 2.5 million square feet of commercial building space.

If you just give me the opportunity to go out on the trails to spend a year, and I'll go out there quietly and just study your property, I'd really like that opportunity.

We shook hands.

I said, absolutely, go right ahead.

So I came out and I studied the trails for for a year.

Before I knew it, I'm like starting to sketch it.

And I've got 26 miles laid out on this map.

We got to start building.

And so I thought, I'm going to grab my son and daughter who were, you know, six years old at that time.

And we came out, we built a mile of trail together.

And then there was a divine intervention.

We were coming across the railroad tracks one evening and two guys showed up and they said, "Hey, we know you're building trails.

We want to help."

If people were this excited about it, then we need to make something happen.

So, said every Saturday morning from 8:30 to 12:30- "Guys, just to let folks know we're going to we're going to start building That first weekend, they came up.

Seven people showed up.

The next weekend, 20 people showed up.

And before I knew it, every single Saturday, we'd have anywhere from from 15 to 30 people showing up.

We started on what's called the red white loop now, and before I knew it, there was a couple businesses that said, hey, we want to participate in this.

We have volunteer days.

So we're not only getting volunteers, you're getting businesses that are involved in this who are helping promote with our employees.

And this thing started spreading like wildfire.

And so I started getting serious and I thought, you know, I've got to release this plan - the 2-5-5-2-6 trail plan.

We're going to build five miles in two years, and we're going to build 26 miles in five years.

And and surprisingly, there's no questions of that.

Fast forward to this whole process.

And we have 32 miles and we build it all within four and a half years.

I don't think that's ever been done across United States.

Every trail system has their own designs, and I respect all of that.

I didn't want them to have arrows of, you got to go this way or that way, or, you can only go this way this time of year and this way that time of year.

You know, I really wanted people to come out and and explore on their own and have that freedom, because that's what we're coming out to the woods for, is having some freedom.

And so as I'm thinking about the blaze, I'm thinking about those that are directionally challenged.

You know, red whites are colors here.

Our city of hurricane.

So the first blaze, the first three and a half mile loop, or the 5K loop that I laid out was a red-white.

The second loop that I started laying out was a green-white, which was, you know, a lot of people may think that it was Marshall at the time, but it's Winfield because it's part of Putnam County.

And then the third loop of that was the blue-gold, which is part of our Buffalo folks up in the northern part of the county.

And then we ended up having a purple-pink and a purple-pink is just for the fun folks.

There's some really fun characters that helped build this trail.

And I thought, man, that's some fun colors for them.

Woo!

The, the very first event was a trail race.

It was a running race, and that was in October of 2020.

Actually, I can't remember that was 2019 or 2020, but that's when the first event was.

And now we have at least, I don't know, six, 6 to 8 events a year.

Like we have wild mushroom hikes.

We have, wild edible hikes, we have, medicinal hikes.

And we have all those education events that go along with this.

We have the West Virginia mountain Bike Association, WVMBA I had a good friend who came out, actually, I didn't know him at the time, but he came out and he was an attorney.

He's a runner.

He's helping build trails.

And, he says, "Brandon, you oughta really think about organizing this a little bit more into a nonprofit organization."

I thought, man, this isn't for me.

I just want to come build trails.

I said, but if we're going to do this, I got to have a team.

I've got to have somebody who understands websites.

I've got to have somebody who understands education.

I've got to have somebody who understands events.

I've got to have runners.

I've got to have mountain bikers.

We started Meeks Mountain Trail Alliance and, it was, it was really interesting and how it all began because none of us really knew each other.

But when I showed up at the meeting, I showed up with a bundle of sticks.

I had 11 sticks in my hand.

I said, guys, we're going to have to make tough decisions and we're going to have to do things that we never thought we were going to do.

But as I showed them the sticks, I showed them that you can't hardly break that bundle of sticks that are 11.

But as I started taking the sticks away, it was easy to break 2 or 3 of the sticks or four sticks or whatever.

But the 11 together, there was a lot of strength in that, and I think that resonated with all of them.

The fact that we're in this together.

No matter if we disagree as a board, that we're not going to walk away and say, well, that's not what I want to do.

And that has never been the case with us.

We've always walked away from meetings in a harmonious manner, and there may be a difference of opinions, but these folks are serious and they're passionate about this trail system and what it's done for the community.

The most important part of our mission statement is building trails, building community, building people.

And wholeheartedly, this main thing is all about building people within our community.

We've had guys that have started mountain biking.

We've got one individual who's helping maintain trails right now and within a year's time has lost 200 pounds.

That is the type of impact that this trail system has had on our community.

There's so many stories like that.

So it's not only affecting us socially, mentally, but physically as well.

But it all gets back to the people.

So when folks ask, you know, you're out there building trails.

Yes, we're building trails.

We're building community.

But most importantly, we're building people in all of this.