Get to or away from it all on the Hank Aaron State Trail

Straddling the line between secluded natural setting and unique alternative transportation route, the Hank Aaron State Trail is a popular – yet still underutilized – Milwaukee resource.

For those in the know, it's proven to be a one-of-a-kind urban oasis for people looking for a quick and scenic escape from the city, as well as a centrally located express route for pedestrians and bikers to get between home and work, Brewers games and many of the city's summer festivals.

Now, with a new western extension to 94th Place and more plans for expansion in the works, even more Milwaukee-area residents can easily take advantage of one of the city's most convenient trails.

"We're hearing from several people that are saying they had been driving their car to work," said Hank Aaron State Trail Manager Melissa Cook. "They're starting to use this to get to work, and they're really just kind of blown away that they're able to get to work so quickly on the trail. For them, the trail becomes this new close-to-home resource for them to be able to hop and get to other places."

The extra 4.5 miles of asphalt trail added in 2010 will eventually extend farther west to the Milwaukee/Waukesha County border. By mid-October the new arm of the trail will be paved in limestone, connecting the Hank Aaron and Oak Leaf Trails at Underwood Creek, near 124th Street and Bluemound Road.

Like the established trail, the extension will offer a peaceful escape into nature without steering people far from civilization.

"If you walked or rode your bike through that area, people are very surprised," said Cook. "It has lots of nice trees, very heavily vegetated, and they don't expect that because it's really, truly in the center of our county and in a very urbanized area."

The environment has always played an important role on the trail, and no more so than on the paths that run near the Menomonee River.

"The river is always an interesting aspect of this, but we look at the ability to get people down to the river as a major goal of all of our efforts," said Cook. "It's always a little bit more difficult with a river that's ever-changing, but what we want to do is make more areas within that that people can actually go down and enjoy the river, or they can fish, or they sit near the river and relax."

As part of their efforts to make the trail even more accessible to the greater Milwaukee area, the Department of Natural Resources will also work in partnership with the Department of Transportation, the Department of Natural Resources, the City of Milwaukee, Menomonee Valley partners and the Urban Ecology Center to add yet another extension to the trail starting in 2012. This new add-on will encompass 24 acres of space south of the river roughly between the 27th and 35th Street viaducts. The addition will feature two more bridge connections, including one that will lead to and from the Mitchell Park Domes.

"When we opened the tunnel at 37th Street, for many of those people who live in that near-South Side neighborhood, that was the first time they had this access to the river," said Cook. "That'll be additional trail mileage, but there will also be a 24-acre vegetation rehabilitation in making that into a park that will also serve as the outdoor science lab for Urban Ecology Center and the students that come there to receive their science-based education."

Partnerships like the ones with Urban Ecology Center and the trail's dedicated volunteer network, the Friends of Hank Aaron State Trail, play a major part in increasing community involvement and participation along the trail. The Friends group in particular provides a lot of help enhancing the trail, doing everything from adding art installations and rehabbing the old streetcar shelters placed along the trail to funding bike camps for area kids through the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin.

"There's where the Friends group really rises to the occasion," said Cook. "They go out to adjacent neighborhood schools and they put on two week-long bike camps where the kids are getting three hours a day of training and riding where they learn all the safe ways to ride their bikes. Some of these kids write thank-you notes and they'll say, 'We really had a lot of fun, and now my mother is going to get a bike because we live close enough to the trail and now we're riding our bikes together.' How do you quantify that? It's just a phenomenal feeling."

While the trail extensions help to connect with more people along the city's outer borders, the big-picture goal for all of the trail's enhancements is to provide all of Milwaukee with awareness of and access to this resource.

"I don't think people realize it," said Cook. "The trails that we have here in Milwaukee County in particular are really easy-to-use trails that most people who are average bicyclists can get out on and enjoy safely. The thing that I really love hearing is when we finally get people out to take a tour of the Hank Aaron State Trail by bike, at first some of them are like, 'Am I going to be able to do this?' and then as we're riding they'll say to me, 'Wow, this is easy; this is really great!'"