Vermont's Northeast Kingdom comprises over 2,000 miles of the northeast corner of the Green Mountain State, with New Hampshire to the east and Canada along the northern border. 

It's a region known for its incredible pastoral beauty, with rolling hills, mountainous ridgelines, glacially carved lakes, and rivers working their way through this ancient landscape. It is, in many ways, about as quintessential Vermont as it gets, with many small but tightly knit communities, plenty of craft food and drink, vibrant art scenes, and plenty to offer for those who prefer to spend their time in the great outdoors. By early autumn, the Green Mountain State glows with a bit more of a red and gold hue as the air begins to clear and the views begin to expand. For many outsiders, the Northeast Kingdom has become top of mind whenever mountain biking comes up, and that's not by accident.

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​​As you work your way north of Lyndonville on route 114, you'll see the mountain before you see the town. Burke Mountain rises over 3200 feet above sea level and just over 2200 feet from the road. Shortly thereafter, you'll see the bikes. They're on top of cars, hanging off of the back of truck beds, propped against virtually every building in town. They come in all shapes and sizes; from fully rigid single speeds to hardtails and 6" trail bikes to dual crown park rigs and they're all there for the same thing: the Kingdom Trails.

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The Kingdom Trails is a network of trails built primarily (see: 96%) on the private properties of over 100 landowners, and the Kingdom Trails Association is tasked with the management of the trails. The KTA was first formed in 1994 and has a decidedly Vermont-ish backstory chock full of in-kind gestures, good neighbor vibes, and a small collection of people with big intentions. The owner of Burke Mountain Resort, Doug Kitchel, helped put together the original board of directors, which included himself, John Worth, some of the landowners, a lawyer and a bookkeeper. The lawyer helped them acquire their 501(c)3 in-kind. The landowners who were a part of the board owned inns and farms and were happy to have their respective properties be a part of this operation. Eventually, John Worth would leave the board of directors to become the first paid employee of the Kingdom Trails Association as the trails manager and designer. In 1996, the KTA developed the first trail map of the area. Staff members were brought on board over the coming years including new executive directors, trail coordinators, etc. By the early 2000s, the Kingdom Trails were a bonafide destination for mountain bikers far and wide.

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The Kingdom Trails saw an explosion in popularity that began in earnest around 2010, with mountain bikers coming from all corners of North America to ride what was dubbed “Disneyland for mountain bikers”. Numerous studies were conducted over the years that began to show a profound economic impact these trails were having on the town of East Burke, VT. In 2016, a statewide study conducted by Camoin Associates, an agency specializing economic and fiscal impact analyses, was paid for by the Vermont Trails and Greenways Council. The Kingdom Trail Association was one of four trail networks to participate in the study, and among the results it was determined that the Kingdom Trails hosted approximately 94,000 trail users in 2015, primarily from spring through autumn, and peaking during the summer months.

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In 2019, the Kingdom Trail Association published a community report, highlighting their 25 years of existence, and showing just how powerful an economic asset the trails have proven to be in that time, with estimated impact upwards of $10 million in 2018 alone. The region played host to nearly 140,000 visits that year, with 84% coming from out of state. The ever increasing surge in popularity of the trails was profound and somewhat unmitigated, which led to something of a crisis in the fall of 2019. On November 21st of that year, three landowners informed the Kingdom Trail Association that they would no longer allow cyclists to access the trails located within their respective property boundary lines. A 4th landowner, whose property ran adjacent to the aforementioned collective, joined their ranks a few weeks later on December 16th. The letters did not include any specific reasons for the restricted access. On January 17th it was announced that the enormously popular NEMBA Fest, an annual celebration and fundraiser for both the Kingdom Trail Association and New England Mountain Bike Association with upwards of 4,000 participants based out of Darling Hill, would be cancelled for 2020. On January 23rd, the KTA finally issued an open letter to the community taking complete responsibility for having "been slow to respond to issues and concerns and we acknowledge our lack of voice and leadership", and promising "to be more responsive and transparent as we roll out plans and address challenges."

The entire episode was not only a gut punch to the community of East Burke, but a wakeup call for mountain bikers heard far and wide. The growth in popularity of the Kingdom Trails went unchecked for too long and despite the best intentions of the KTA, the collision of visitors and property owners seemed almost inevitable. The timing of the trail closure was especially difficult, as the COVID-19 pandemic further complicated remediation efforts, seemingly setting the trails and the trail association back in their efforts to work around the closure of the once very popular section trails.

“It really dealt a huge blow,” Georgia Gould, former Olympian and currently the interim Executive Director of KTA says of the closure. “ Because the landowners owned a huge portion of Darling Hill, which was our most popular section of trail. It was a huge wakeup call for Kingdom because prior to that point, they hadn’t really considered how the locals were feeling about this massive surge in visits. 

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The first thing they did was to recognize that it’s every private landowner’s right to withdraw their land from the system. “Our new Executive Director at that time was Abby Long, and she did such a good job of establishing more frequent communications with our landowners. She wanted to catch issues before they blew up publicly. She wanted to give landowners a voice, and established an advisory committee so they could help inform KTA on concerns.”

As massively popular as the Kingdom Trails are, the town of East Burke itself is extremely small, and the festival-like atmosphere the trails created virtually every weekend during the summer months put real stress on the infrastructure of the community, so the Kingdom Trails Association also began to shift trail traffic in effort to spread riders out and not have Darling Hill be the epicenter of visiting riders. The “reset” that came post-COVID and post-trail closure was something of a quiet period for East Burke and the Kingdom Trails, with a dip in numbers people began to explore other parts of the region, allowing KTA to put more energy into new trails instead of repairing existing trails. Areas like East Haven, the Wildflower Backyard, and even integration with Burke Bike Park trails have helped to mitigate issues with parking and trail traffic in the years that followed the initial trail closure. Beyond that, the continued education of visitors on the importance of respecting landowners has led to a new mantra of sorts of KTA: Ride With Gratitude. It's an initiative that seeks to remind local and visiting riders alike that riding these trails is only possible due to the generosity of the network's many landowners.

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“What it means in general,” Orion Campbell-Wolk, Trails Manager for KTA, says when asked about where Ride With Gratitude came from. “Is to treat everyone with respect and how you’d want to be treated. Also to bring awareness that you are riding on over 100 people’s properties. They have opened up to our use at really no personal gain. Maybe they use the trails themselves, but there are no financial incentives to share their land with KTA. We don’t want to lose this opportunity.”

Growing pains come with the proverbial territory, and while things were challenging for a few years in East Burke, KTA and the rest of the community are coming out of the reset refreshed and ready to take the next step. In many ways, East Burke has been a bit of a northstar for mountain biking in Vermont, and in recent years many other communities have elevated their own profiles throughout the state by following the road map laid out by KTA. It's been a bit quiet in East Burke during that time, but that's not to say they've been resting on their laurels. In some ways, the sun has set on an era in East Burke, and a new one is about to rise on a new one.

“We saw a lot of other places using our model for their own trails,” Georgia says of the downswing at Kingdom Trails. “And it’s great to be seen as a leader within this space. I think having the different portions of our network to really spread riders out has been great. We just couldn’t handle more visitors in downtown East Burke all at once. One of my main goals has been to make sure Kingdom Trails works for the people who live and work here, and to make sure we aren’t creating friction between those people and our visitors. We needed this reset, and now we’re ready for more.”

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