Trail Exchange – A Full Circle Moment
We love sharing our Foundation’s origin story–and if you can’t tell, we’ve been walking down memory lane these past six months as we celebrate major milestones like our first Trailside Headquarters and reaching over a 1,000,000 annual trail interactions, along with honoring the Foundation’s scrappy early days, as we culminate the year on our tenth anniversary this November.
We have some fun surprises in store for that celebration, but as we’ve been combing through our archives, there was one origin story that we wanted to amplify. As the Foundation began to take shape in 2016 with an entirely volunteer board, huge hearts, big visions, and a master planning committee armed with trail inspiration from all over the United States, it was the Virginia Capital Trail that made the top three list of model trail systems to emulate. The Cap Trail was formed in 2004 through a public-private partnership with the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation. As the ERTF’s founding board members navigated setting up a similar public-private partnership here in Norfolk, they turned to our neighbors in Richmond for guidance.
At the time, the Virginia Capital Trail had just seen 500,000 trail interactions and the VCT Foundation’s first Director, Beth Weisbrod agreed to come to Norfolk for two days to meet with our committees, tour the trail, and guide our founders in best practices as we established our own public-private partnership with the City of Norfolk. We learned from the VCT’s experience and many of our current practices are attributed to those early lessons. We have modeled our Trail Ambassador program after our Cap Trail friends, we learned the importance of adding trail counters, specific wayfinding signage, and direction on staffing, strategic planning and programs, and importantly gaining public support and funding. VCT had a successful $60MM campaign for construction! Under Beth’s guidance our volunteer founders set the conditions for success of the Elizabeth River Trail and a search for the first ERT Executive Director commenced.
Fast forward to June 2026 when we received an email from Cyndee Dragoo, the Director of Development and Communication for the Virginia Capital Trail.
“My colleague and I were in the area last month and stopped by. Unfortunately, it was the day after the grand opening, so the office was closed. We took advantage of the beautiful weather and enjoyed a walk along the Elizabeth River Trail instead. We had such a wonderful time exploring the artwork, parks, and gardens along the Trail.
Our team would love to visit again (this time all 5 of us), meet everyone at the ERT, and get a tour of the new space and Trail if you’re up for it. We really admire the work you’re doing and the positive impact you are making in the community. We would love to learn more about your programs and initiatives and explore opportunities for collaboration down the road.”
We were over the moon, (and there may have been an ERT team dance party after this email was shared)! For us, a small, scrappy team, to be able to host our mentors and share our experiences with them, felt a bit like meeting superheroes. And, so a date was set for a Trail Exchange.
On July 29th Cyndee, Will, Steph and Alex arrived in Norfolk ready to explore. Our team had planned an agenda that covered some of the things we were most proud of and wanted to show off. The day was packed with presentations, HQ tours, two trail section tours by bike, (using our new bike rental fleet), a lovely lunch and #trailgrazing at Trailside spot Press 626 where we got to know each other better, exchanged ideas and planned for a future trail exchange.
As the ERT Foundation commits to its mission of connecting a regional trail system, it is imperative that we collaborate with our partner trail systems to not just learn from each other, but to join together to strategically plan our connections, advocate with one voice for the importance of regional connections and appeal to our lawmakers for dedicated funding.
This experience was truly a full circle moment for us and we can’t wait to experience the Virginia Capital Trail with their team as tour guides!
