Trail clearing has begun on the South Fowl snowmobile trail. The U.S. Forest Service and volunteers from the Arrowhead Coalition for Multiple Use are working together to re-establish the connection between McFarland and South Fowl lakes.
Slow as the wheels of the government can be, they almost ground to a halt during the 12 years of environmental appeals and lawsuits filed by four environmental groups against the U.S. Forest Service in their efforts to halt the construction of a 2.2-mile snowmobile trail.
On July 28, 2015, Cook County commissioners agreed to pay $1,380 to lease a small portion of land from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) so that the long-awaited South Fowl snowmobile access (Tilbury Trail) can be reestablished to connect McFarland and South Fowl Lakes.
The lease of .65 acres of state land is for 20 years.
The Forest Service is in charge of the snowmobile trail project, but will be assisted in building and maintaining the 2.2-mile trail by the Arrowhead Coalition for Multiple Use (ACMU) organization.
In 2003, then Gunflint District Ranger Dennis Neitzke closed the route after it was brought to his attention that the trail, which had been used by locals since the 1960s to access their cabins or to get to lakes so they could go ice fishing, encroached on the Boundary Waters Canoe Areas Wilderness (BWCAW) boundaries, which were established in 1978.
Neitzke sought to replace the trail, and the first public hearing was held in 2004. After 11 years of environmental studies and an estimated $100,000 in legal fees by the Forest Service, not to mention the dollars expended by Cook County, ACMU and the Conservationists with Common Sense, Judge John Tunheim ruled in favor of the Forest Service in February of 2015.
The trail was built through an area logged by Verl Tilbury in the ’60s at the end of the Arrowhead Trail in Hovland, adjacent to what is now the BWCAW. Locals constructed and maintained the snowmobile trail connecting McFarland and South Fowl Lakes.
In 2015 the legal wrangling ended and the trail is now back on track to be opened.
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