Higher ATV registration fees grease a new era of off-road trail building

Motorsports salesman Jake Wedge set up his bannered vending tent in Hill City last week for a rip-roaring ATV rally at Quadna Mountain Park.

In just its fifth year of bringing off-road enthusiasts together to play in the dirt, the three-day Quadna Mud Nationals was expected to draw 3,000 people — many arriving by trail. That sort of thing was unheard of seven years ago when Wedge was peddling early recreational four-wheelers at Ray's Sport & Cycle in Grand Rapids.

"They'd complain there's nowhere to ride 'em,'' Wedge said of customers in those days.

Now ATV trail riding has become a growing obsession north of the Twin Cities, outpacing local interest in motorcycles and displacing snowmobile riding. Once the bane of outdoors purists, ATV recreation has become a mainstream pursuit blessed by townships, cities, county boards, the U.S. Forest Service and the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

The 2017 Legislature approved a $1 million-a-year increase in registration fees for ATVs and separately completed funding for the $2.2 million Prospector Loop ATV Trail System that will connect existing North Shore ATV trails to Ely, Tower, Embarrass and Babbitt.

Projected to encompass more than 250 miles of trail, the Prospector will range across two state parks and the Superior National Forest. During a 45-day public comment period as part of a federal review, not a single person objected to it.

"Give it another 10 years,'' Wedge said of the ATV movement. "We're just in the infancy.''

• More than 407,000 ATVs were registered in Minnesota in 2015, up from 152,000 in 2000.

• The state ATV trail network (excluding national forest trails) stood at 2,634 miles in 2015, up 24 percent from 2011.

• One of the nation's first recreation areas catering primarily to off-highway vehicles — the Iron Range Off-Highway Vehicle State Recreation Area in Gilbert — is undergoing its second expansion since it was first designated in 1996.

• The DNR provided safety training to 7,544 ATV riders last year, up from 4,400 riders in 2015 and 3,777 in 2014.

• The DNR will soon meet with citizens in Cass County to discuss a proposal to allow off-highway vehicles to operate on forest roads and designated trails in Centennial State Forest, Minnesota's newest state forest.

• Alvwood Squaw Lake ATV Club opened a 159-mile ATV trail system that required Itasca County approval for use of county roads as connectors to off-road areas, including logging trails on federal property.

• Bluff Country ATV Club is attempting to build a riding network around Rushford. It's one of several new trail initiatives in southern Minnesota, a place with far less public land than northern Minnesota.

Looking at the trends, Wedge said it reminds him of the early 1970s when snowmobile clubs joined forces with the DNR and many local governments for a building spree that ended with more than 20,000 miles of designated, mapped snowmobile trails.

Minnesota's ATV trail network, now about 2,600 miles, pales in comparison. But with the DNR now controlling a sustainable ATV bankroll of at least $7 million a year, the agency is partnering with rider clubs and local governments to aggressively expand. It's the same "grant-in-aid'' model that was pioneered by the state's snowmobile enthusiasts. The clubs plan, build and maintain trails with state money.

"We're building a trail system in Minnesota that I believe will be second to none,'' said George Radtke, president of the statewide ATV Association of Minnesota.

ATV recreation has helped revive the economy in southern West Virginia, where remnant mining roads anchor the Hatfield-McCoy Trails. Maine has built 6,000 miles of ATV trails. Southern Utah has embraced ATV tourism, and the entire Upper Midwest is generally ahead of the rest of the country in its embrace of the recreation.

Wedge, who has been selling motorsports equipment for 30 years, said ATV sales now account for up to 65 percent of his business around Grand Rapids. Area motorcycle sales have imploded there since the recession, he said, and families that can't afford to own snowmobiles and ATVs are opting for four-wheelers because of snow shortages and greater carrying capacity for family members.

Radtke agreed that lack of snow has contributed to the consumer shift toward ATVs. "That's been a huge piece of it,'' he said.