It’s hard to feel it was a fair vote, but Durango was unsuccessful in its bid to earn part of $100,000 in grants that Bell Helmets is giving away to support three “dream trail projects” around the country.

In online voting that ended Sunday, Cottage Grove Bike Park near St. Paul, Minnesota, won among four central region applicants with 12,322 votes, said Mary Monroe, director of Trails 2000, which sponsored the Chapman Hill Bike Park’s proposed pump track in the contest.

Chapman Hill was third with 4,513 votes.

If you consider the Twin Cities metro area has about 3.3 million people, then by percentage, La Plata County (population 52,000) would have needed just 195 votes to win.

“You guys ran a great campaign, punching above your weight, for sure,” Chris Bernhardt, director of field programs for the International Mountain Bicycling Association, wrote in an email to Monroe.

IMBA is co-sponsoring the contest.

“I think it shows there’s a big desire to make that project happen at Chapman Hill,” Monroe said Monday afternoon. “We have to go with that momentum.”

The next step for the project, which includes the improvement of existing trails and the addition of flow trails and a skills area: The city of Durango is in the process of hiring a contractor to do design and oversight.

What can be built and what it will cost is still to be determined.

Andres Bike Park in the Chicago area, was second with 11,424 votes. Hobbs Hollow Flow Trail near Nashville and Bloomington, Indiana, was last with 2,500 votes.

Herald Staff

This story has been corrected since its original publication to fix attribution in a quote.