Lincoln County will apply for the upcoming round of Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act grants.

County Grants administrator Elaine Zimmerman said At the County Commission meeting Sept. 2, for this round, need based in going to be a huge part of how the projects are ranked.

She said she is asking people to come into her office now and bring suggestions on what they would like to have funds for.

Over the past number of years, she noted, local parks have received SNPLMA grants, and such projects now seem to be falling out of favor.

The City of Caliente has an excellent idea for a project, she said, and turned the floor over Mayor Stana Hurlbert.

She said recent cooperative meetings with the Bureau of Land Management, the State Park Service, and the County, have talked about the bike trails the International Mountain Bike Association is planning to build around Caliente.

“We have funded amongst all of us the $40,000 that was needed to do the design process for the 40 miles worth of trails to start with. The BLM has a budget application for $2 million to put in trails that will connect with the Caliente Trails.”

Very soon, Hurlbert thought, the City will bring a proposal to the Commission board to ask for SNPLMA funding to put in a trailhead, a park, and five miles of trails that will connect with BLM trails.

Planning work has been go-ing on for over a year, getting trails that will connect throughout the entire County, she said. “The big picture is to have a county-wide trail system with the BLM and Caliente. BLM is going to put in a trailhead at the Trilobite site (on U.S. 93), and the City will have one in town. Our hopes are to go for more funding through the park service to have Kershaw-Ryan and Cathedral Gorge connected. All this will bring quite a bit of economic development to the County. This is just the beginning of the dream. We have all jumped on board to make this a reality.”

Caliente will be the center and hub for the trail system, Hurlbert said, “because we have the support services there to support this project.”