11/02/2006

Record-Eagle/Jan-Michael Stump
Lois Bahle received the Jim Mudgett Trail Pioneer Award for her work on the creation of the Leelanau Trail. The former railroad grade runs from Northport to the Traverse City area and took over 10 years to plan and complete.

Trail advocate Lois Bahle wins Jim Mudgett award

Department store owner honored for her TART work

By VICTOR SKINNER

vskinner@record-eagle.com

SUTTONS BAY — She's described as the "keeper of all things.”

And she's been a president, an organizer, a fundraiser, a user and a promoter of the Grand Traverse area's trail system since the first organizational meeting of the Leelanau Trail in 1994.

So it was no surprise to people who know and work with Lois Bahle that she received this year's Jim Mudgett Trail Pioneer Award for her work with the Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation Trail system.

"Lois was one of those people who saw the value of preserving the land for a public purpose to serve future generations,” said Bob Otwell, TART's executive director. "She is a tireless supporter of all of our trails, but especially the Leelanau Trail.”

Bahle, 57, is the fourth-generation owner of Bahle's Department Store in Suttons Bay and takes a daily, 40-minute, early-morning walk on the trail.

Her passion for the trail comes in part from her great-grandfather, Lars Bahle, who was involved with the railroad that eventually became the trail, Bahle said.

Bahle and other Suttons Bay businessmen bought the bankrupt railroad in 1917 to keep the corridor to Traverse City alive. M-22 long since replaced the railroad as the major artery to the eastern Leelanau peninsula, but Bahle wanted to preserve the railroad as a trail.

"There was a group of us who felt it was important to preserve ... it was too valuable,” Bahle said. "It is an amazing asset to Suttons Bay.”

Bahle said she was proud to receive the award named after her co-worker Jim Mudgett, who died in 2004.

"He was a wonderful, quiet, soft spoken person who came to tense meetings and was always calm and people listened to him,” Bahle said.

Bahle spent the last decade working with local governments and national organizations like Rails to Trails to promote and develop the Leelanau Trail and the larger network of TART trails it joined in 1998.

She served as president of the TART trail system from 2001 to 2003 and as an active board member until 2005.

"There were about 100 people in the room when we announced (the award) and there seemed to be a strong agreement with the choice,” Otwell said.

"It was an amazing evening ... to have all my trail buddies in the room cheering,” Bahle said.