At its Tuesday meeting, Marion City Council agreed to ask the state to designate a portion of downtown Marion as part of the Fonta Flora State Trail.
This would not involve any trail or sidewalk construction, but it will help define a path to follow.
The Fonta Flora State Trail was officially designated as a state trail on June 24, 2015, by the North Carolina General Assembly. The act authorized the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources to add the Fonta Flora Trail to the state parks system.
When completed, the Fonta Flora State Trail will extend from Lake James in Burke County and continue through all of McDowell County before ending in Buncombe County and Asheville.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the City Council considered submitting an application to the N.C. State Parks State Trails Program to designate .53 of a mile of the Fonta Flora State Trail in downtown Marion. This section begins at Marion City Hall and extends to the intersection of Yancey Road and Oakwood Drive.
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“This would create the second designated section of Fonta Flora State Trail in Marion and be an integral link between existing sections to the east and west of Marion,” said Planning Director Heather Cotton.
Once designated, city staff will work with Friends of the Fonta Flora State Trail to develop signs and a trail kiosk in downtown Marion at the Marion City Stage with a ribbon-cutting ceremony planned in 2023 in celebration of the newly designated trail section as part of the annual celebration of Year of the Trail, Cotton added.
In 2016, the Joseph McDowell Historic Catawba Greenway was the first section of the Fonta Flora State Trail to be designated in Marion. The Peavine Trail could be extended to the City Stage at Marion’s North Block and it could be connected to the Fonta Flora Trail, Cotton added.
Council enthusiastically agreed to have the .53 of a mile from Yancey Road to downtown Marion added to the state trail.
In other business, City Clerk/Public Information Officer Landdis Hollifield gave a report about her work to have the historic minutes of Marion City Council meetings digitized and added to the city’s website.
Through this project, Hollifield has transferred the minutes of City Council meetings dating back as far as 1892 to the city’s website: www.marionnc.org. There, anyone can read the minutes of council meetings from the past 100 years and also search the digitized minutes for certain topics.
In addition, Hollifield gave a report of the November and December events in Marion. The theme of the 2022 downtown holiday season is “The 12 Days of Christmas.”
The events are as follows: Dia de Muertos (Saturday), Marion Christmas parade (Sunday, Nov. 20), Shop Small Main Street Crawl (Saturday, Nov. 26), Festival of Trees at the Larry D. Miller Business Complex (Monday, Nov. 28 through Friday, Dec. 30), Blue Ridge Artisans Craft Show & Sale at MACA (month of December), Historic Church Open House (Thursday, Dec. 1), Soulful Christmas with West Marion Community Forum (Saturday, Dec. 3), Historic Church Open House (Thursday, Dec. 8), Visit with Santa at City Stage (Friday, Dec. 9), Mountain Music Christmas with Marion East Community Forum (Saturday, Dec. 10), Christmas Latinx Style with Centro Unido Latino Americano (Thursday, Dec. 15), Christmas Fest/Ugly Sweater Contest Gift Card Drawing (Friday, Dec. 16), Carolina Onstage Christmas Show at the Municipal Event Center (Friday, Dec. 16, Saturday, Dec. 17, and Sunday, Dec. 18), and Rotary Club of Marion’s New Year’s Eve celebration (Saturday, Dec. 31).
