Dreams of hiking, biking from Columbia to Lake Murray to be reality with new river trails
Dreams of hiking or biking all the way from Lake Murray to Columbia could soon be a reality.
A 200-acre lease from Dominion Energy will open up land along the Saluda River for the creation of hiking trails and mountain bike paths upstream from the Riverbanks Zoo.
“Why is that important? Connectivity,” Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann explained during a press conference Wednesday to announce the deal.
Midlands leaders have been working for years to connect the area’s Three Rivers Greenway system. The more than 12-mile trail system has been growing in piecemeal stages.
The Dominion land deal will allow the Saluda River portion of the trail system to extend all the way to Lake Murray. The utility made a similar lease arrangement roughly 50 years ago for land that is now the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden.
“Down the road you’ll be able to hop from the Hilton hotel on a bike and go all the way to the dam without ever getting in traffic,” Rickenmann said.
The Central Midlands Council of Governments along with the Irmo Chapin Recreation Commission in 2021 completed a feasibility study for the trail’s extension. The $24 million project is now paid for and has received local, state and federal dollars, including a $3.2 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The undeveloped 200 acres being leased by Dominion will remain largely undeveloped beyond the addition of hiking and potentially separate mountain bike trails, but Rickenmann said members of the partnership are also looking at how to increase use of the trails.
Rickenmann proposed adding outdoor exercise equipment and creating a hammock park in parts of the trail area.
The work also will include creating more access points to get into the river, so recreationists aren’t scrambling over rocks and branches to get to the water.
Keller Kissam, president of Dominion Energy in South Carolina, said he believes the partnership will transform the Midlands, and he offered up a new slogan to replace Columbia’s “famously hot” moniker.
“After this announcement today, I got a new one for you. It’s gonna be ‘Rocking and rolling on the SBC, the Saluda the Broad and the Congaree,’” he said.
The connection between Columbia and Lake Murray won’t be fully complete until after the state’s Carolina Crossroads project is finished, however. That project is overhauling the Interstate 20 and Interstate 26 interchange often called Malfunction Junction. The Saluda River runs underneath I-26.
Any work done on the 200 acres upstream from the Saluda River walk will also need Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval, and all 19 entities included in the partnership will get to comment on the process.
Elsewhere, work to open more access to the Congaree in downtown Columbia is also moving ahead. Columbia leaders have long dreamed of a crown jewel riverfront park along the Congaree River downtown. After being denied federal money for the project for years, the city has secured $9 million from the state to finish infrastructure work necessary to begin activating the riverfront.
The family that controls the riverfront parcels has also agreed to donate the land to the city with the caveat that it be developed into a riverfront destination.
