Crunch.
With a bit of mud splatter and a lot of smile, Bo Frazier dismounted onto the gravel parking lot. “Fantastic. You’d think the trails would be kind of wet and soggy, but it was really good. Really good,” he said, one palm on the handlebars of his thick-wheeled bike.
For the last month and a half, Frazier, a 58-year-old resident of Hiwassee, has been mountain biking two to three times a week up Stonecutters Hollow, one of three properties that make up the 778-acre Brush Mountain Park.
In a press release on Feb. 17, the New River Land Trust, a Blacksburg-based nonprofit conservation organization, announced “the successful transfer of ownership of the 239-acre” Stonecutters Hollow property to the Town of Blacksburg “for permanent conservation and public access.”
The Stonecutters property provides the public with 6-plus miles of multi-use trails over a natural space that is roughly the size of 181 football fields.
The ownership transfer is a significant milestone in the ongoing Brush Mountain Park project. According to the NRLT’s press release, the project “combines two important aspects of conservation: permanent legal protection of the land and public access” to that land.
The project “preserves [the land’s] ecological benefits and its social benefits, and trails are increasing economic drivers for communities,” NRLT Executive Director John Eustis said in a phone interview.
The Brush Mountain Park project: a short biography
Eustis explained the Brush Mountain Park project in a phone call with Cardinal News.
Brush Mountain Park is made up of three properties with names that relate to the area’s history of mining: McDonald Hollow, Stonecutters Hollow and Millstone Ridge.
In 2018, the NRLT purchased McDonald Hollow and Stonecutters Hollow with a $1.2 million grant from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. In 2021, the NRLT transferred ownership of McDonald Hollow to the town of Blacksburg. In 2023, the NRLT used community donations to purchase an additional 20 acres for Stonecutters Hollow, the property that was transferred last week.
The third parcel of land, Millstone Ridge, was purchased by the NRLT and the town of Blacksburg with funds from a variety of sources, including a $210,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Conservation in 2021. Eustis estimates that it will be two or three years before the NRLT conveys its ownership stake in the Millstone Ridge property to the town of Blacksburg.
“Once the trails on each of the three properties are almost or all built-out, then one-by-one we transfer the properties to the town, and at that time, the town has to sign a conservation easement with the Virginia Outdoor Foundation to ensure that the town can’t just decide in 20 years to break it up and sell it to a developer. It can’t ever be divided. It has to be maintained as forest and open to the public,” said Eustis.
Blacksburg Mayor Michael Sutphin expressed the town’s dedication to the land in an emailed statement: “We’re grateful to the New River Land Trust and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation for their leadership in permanently conserving this land while also ensuring public access. The Town of Blacksburg takes seriously the responsibility of stewarding this property so residents and visitors can enjoy its natural beauty for decades to come.”
Years of community collaboration in land stewardship
“[The Stonecutters Hollow transfer] represents years of thoughtful work and partnership to protect a special part of Brush Mountain for future generations,” Sutphin wrote.
The NRLT has been the fulcrum of the combined effort. “The land trust [NRLT] being able to acquire the land has been the key to getting all of this done,” said Poverty Creek Trails Coalition president and lifelong New River Valley resident Lucas Weaver in a phone interview.
Eustis highlighted the “hard work” of the PCTC, a nonprofit organization with 1500+ volunteers, in helping build and maintain Brush Mountain Park’s trail system.
“We’ve been boots on the ground from the early days of the project,” said Weaver. The PCTC’s contributions to Stonecutters Hollow span the technical work of planning trails to the physical work of digging them. Weaver calls the work a “labor of love” and is particularly proud of the “bike-optimized” trails.
“We have great debates about turn radius and where the best place to change directions is. Oh, man, we could argue for hours on a matter of three feet on a switchback,” said Weaver, who bikes on Stonecutters at least weekly.
Those fervent debates may explain Bo Frazier’s elation with the trails. “Used to be that Carvins Cove was my favorite, but now Brush Mountain is my favorite — it’s gotten so good.”
Brush Mountain Park has been NRLT’s first land acquisition project and first public access project. “It’s been a learning process. We very much think that public access is a conservation value, and we are looking to do more projects like this,” said Eustis.
Accessing Brush Mountain Park
All three properties comprising Brush Mountain Park are currently open to the public. Parking is available at McDonald Hollow and at Heritage Park at 2701 Meadowbrook Drive with access to Stonecutters Hollow via a recently completed spur of the Huckleberry Trail and via the Chimney Trail starting at the Rotary Mountain Skills Bike Park.