Terry McGaughey, 'Mr. Paul Bunyan Trail,' dies

Bike and water trail lovers have lost a great advocate in Terry McGaughey, who worked 25 years to create the 110-mile Paul Bunyan Trail, running from Brainerd to Bemidji.

"I called him Mr. Paul Bunyan Trail," said Brett Feldman, executive director of the nonprofit Parks and Trails Council of Minnesota. In April, the council gave McGaughey its Reuel Harmon Award for lifetime achievement.

McGaughey's impact went far beyond the Paul Bunyan Trail, said Forrest Boe, deputy director of parks and trails for the state Department of Natural Resources. McGaughey was one of the first to develop a citizen-led trail proposal, and in the 1970s, he helped establish the state's canoe and boat routes, with campsites and access points, along major rivers.

"What he learned on the Paul Bunyan Trail is a model that serves communities throughout the state," Boe said. "He was good about sharing information about how to make projects work, how to involve the public. He was a tireless worker to make that happen. He had vision, leadership and stick-to-itiveness."

McGaughey died of natural causes in his Brainerd home July 21. He was 70.

He volunteered about 25 years of his life promoting, lobbying legislators and meeting officials in the trail's 15 towns to make it happen, Feldman said. The trail's website says it is the longest Minnesota bike trail, and Feldman said it's one of the longest continuous paved railroad-bed trails in the nation.

McGaughey "met a lot of resistance in community after community as he tried to get his vision across for recreational opportunities, quality of life and connecting communities to each other," Feldman said. "He is a giant in Minnesota parks and trails."

U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., a friend who obtained federal funds for part of the trail, eulogized McGaughey in Congress on July 22:

"Mr. Speaker, I rise with a very heavy heart to join fellow cyclists throughout Minnesota in mourning the untimely loss of Terry McGaughey," Oberstar said. When McGaughey noticed that the railroad line north of Brainerd was being abandoned in 1993, he "rode out like a modern-day town crier to alert communities along the trail to join together, save the right-of-way, to build the Paul Bunyan Trail, which now has 650,000 users a year."

Jim Klobuchar, another friend who leads annual bike trips on state trails, said McGaughey was a soft-spoken, persistent guy who wouldn't take no for an answer. "If you look at environmental heroes in Minnesota, he has to have a place near the top of the list," he said.

McGaughey graduated from Robbinsdale High School. As a young man, he sold sporting goods at Hoigaards. In the 1960s, he moved his family to Pine River, now on the Paul Bunyan Trail, and became a real estate agent, said daughter Jill McGaughey of New Orleans.

"One of the greatest gifts he gave me and my sister was his love for the outdoors," she said. "He wanted to raise his kids on snowshoes, cross-country skis, in a sailboat or a canoe. He didn't like shooting things except with a camera."