Many GRCVB staff members volunteer on local boards and committees that support the work of tourism in Wake County. For example, Bureau president and CEO Dennis Edwards is a board member of the Triangle Trails Initiative. Read more here about the work of this group and their plans for the future.
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The Triangle Trails Initiative is the region’s newly established collaboration between government, business, anchor institutions and civic leaders to make the Research Triangle Region a national leader in greenways and trails. In total, 14 counties in N.C., extending from the Va. state line to the Cape Fear River in Cumberland County, are supporting the program (Chatham, Cumberland, Durham, Franklin, Harnett, Granville, Johnston, Lee, Moore, Orange, Person, Vance, Wake and Warren).The Triangle region has one of the nation’s most extensive and well-developed networks of greenways and land/water trail systems, which provide excellent access to the area's unique and treasured outdoor resources. The Triangle region is home to the longest off-road stretch of the East Coast Greenway, one of the most well-used sections of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail and the American Tobacco Trail, N.C.’s most heavily used urban greenway. With a constructed network of approximately 400 miles of trails and greenways in use today, Triangle Trails has been established, in partnership with the East Coast Greenway Alliance (ECGA), to brand, promote, market, program and grow this network.

Wake County offers the most developed greenway system among the 14 counties, with a 250-mile network of land and water trails. All 12 municipalities within Wake County have adopted greenway master plans. The signature greenway in Wake County is the Cross Triangle Greenway (a portion of the East Coast Greenway), which is comprised of local greenways including the American Tobacco Trail, White Oak Creek Greenway and Black Creek Greenway in Cary, Umstead Park trails, Reedy Creek Greenway through the Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park at the N.C. Museum of Art and Meredith College campus, the Walnut Creek Greenway through N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus, Dorothea Dix Park, downtown Raleigh and southeast Raleigh and the Neuse River Greenway, which extends north to the Town of Wake Forest and south to Clayton.In the fall of 2021, Triangle Trails will launch a new program titled Triangle Trailblazer to encourage residents of the region to get outdoors and enjoy the vast array of rivers, lakes, forests, wetlands and uplands that make this region such a wonderful place to live and visit. The Triangle Trailblazer program will link participants to signature greenways and destination landscapes across the 14-county region. The Trailblazer program will also enroll certified merchants throughout the region, whose participation will serve the trail-oriented interests and needs of trailblazers.

If you are interested in learning more about the Triangle Trails Initiative, follow progress on Facebook. You will find current information on program, partners, upcoming events and more.

The Triangle Trails organization wants to thank the East Coast Greenway Alliance for their willingness to incubate our organization, the AJ Fletcher Foundation, Research Triangle Park Foundation, Martin Marietta and the Greater Raleigh CVB for their financial support as well as the county commissioners in all 14 counties, who have given their unanimous and enthusiastic support for the establishment of the initiative. We also want to recognize and thank our advisory board, which has helped to guide our work and activity during the past two years.

The winter weather is behind us, and now is the time to gather family and friends, get outdoors and enjoy the incredible network of outdoor resources, trails and greenways across our region.

Happy Trails!

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^{Written by Chuck Flink, FASLA, president of Greenways Incorporated. Images courtesy Sarah Sanford, ECGA (Triangle Trails regional map); Alta (Cross Triangle Greenway). Header photo by Michael Robson.}