Welcome to another edition of Trail Tuesday. This week’s outing combines rich forestry with recreation for everyone. In Madison’s west side, we visit Elver Park.
The main entrance to the park is off McKenna Boulevard. If you come from the beltline, take Exit 255 and turn south onto South Gammon Road. It soon turns into McKenna Boulevard, and shortly after that, the park is to your right.
When you enter the parking lot, you will first witness some of the fun recreational offerings of the park, including tennis courts, a playground, and a splash pad. When I visited the park, a local school was there for a field trip. As you might imagine, those landmarks, especially the splash pad, were full of activity.
The whistles there at the end directed the kids to the open space behind the splash pad. As this was near the path I was going to take, I had to detour and so I headed first towards the softball diamonds past the west section of the parking lot.
Paths around the softball diamonds converge near a bridge, through which we further approach the woods. Shortly after the bridge comes a fork. A right turn takes you towards the entrance to the woods where we will start.
It is at the dead end of a short, somewhat narrow-for-car-traffic road which is also the home to a farm about halfway between the dead end and the other end which intersects with Raymond Road. I paid a visit to the horses; at that point, they were out chomping on the grass.
They were not too interested in my presence, so I returned towards the woods. Stepping through the entrance at the north end of this narrow road, you immediately witness the beauty you’re about to walk through.
This narrow path does not last very long before you end up back in the open and on a wider grassy and slanted part of the trail. Even more shortly thereafter, you will reach a fork in the road. Turning left takes you back towards the parking lot and the fun areas mentioned earlier, but if you want more nature and are up for hills, turn right.
This path is quite steep and windy, but relatively wide. It is perfectly out of the way of the roads and the area full of kids, whom by the way had departed back to their school by this point in my visit.
There are some forks in this pathway. If you take whichever turns lead to more climbing, you will eventually reach a plateau and what is much more open space apart from the trees situated in the area. There are also some targets used for disc golf, as Elver Park is the site of one of over a dozen such courses in the Madison area according to disc golf course locator UDisc.
By advancing towards the left, you will step back out into the open and an even wider grassy pathway, with even taller grass surrounding the trail at different sections of it. A short while later, you will be able to see much of the lower area of the park from above. This is the top of a large hill which is often used for sledding in the winter. If you prefer a more gradual descent, continue straight.
At the next fork in the path, staying straight takes you on a continued path that strays away from Elver Park. If you’re ready to head back down, turn left. You’ll be let out onto a soccer field and in the direction of the splash pad where this adventure began.
So how did this recreational Mecca of Madison come to be? In the 19th century, a man named Charles Elver came to the United States from Germany. Among other things, he was a successful hotel owner. With plenty of money from that enterprise on hand, his will stated that what was left of his estate after his wife and daughter died was to be earmarked for the City of Madison to buy land for a public park. From 1968 to 1988, the city acquired the initial acreage for the park, a space which has since grown to the 220 acres it takes up now.
And according to Chad Hughes, Madison’s West Parks Supervisor, further expansion is in the works.
“There is a property to the west of Elver Park along Mid Town Road that Parks (the Madison Parks Commission) has been in talks with the family that owns the farm there to purchase,” Hughes said.
That was the farm I visited earlier. Good thing then that I checked in on the horses.
The year-round nature of activity at the park is not going away though.
“A lot of our parks see heightened activity during certain times of the year. Elver Park seems to always have something going on. In the winter, there’s a lot of cross country skiing, ice skating, and the large sledding hill is very popular there for area residents. And then during the summer, again, just that hill and the sides of it draws (sic) a lot of people for activities, the disc golf course, the softball diamond,” Hughes described.
That all plus the beautiful nature trails equals one of Madison’s premier recreational destinations.
Be sure to tune in next week for another edition of Trail Tuesday.