Paddle the Wisconsin River's new water trail, the Great Pinery Heritage Waterway

It's still being developed, but a newly-designated water trail in the middle of Wisconsin already is attracting thousands of paddlers and may well be on its way to receiving national designation by the National Park Service.

Called the Great Pinery Heritage Waterway, it stretches 108 miles on the Wisconsin River from the Hat Rapids Dam in Oneida County to the Lake DuBay Dam in Portage County. The waterway also includes shorter stretches of the Lower Big Rib River and the Lower Eau Claire River.

A water trail is a similar concept to a walking trail — only instead of guiding hikers through wooded landscapes, it helps canoe and kayak paddlers make their way along the river, said Bill Bertram, the president of the board of the Wausau and Marathon County Parks Foundation, the driving force behind the Great Pinery development.

In order to aid paddlers along the route, the Great Pinery's website at greatpinery.org offers a slew of information, including maps, locations of boat landings (including several designed to help people with disabilities or strength problems get onto the water), river conditions and water levels, and suggestions for fun things to do near the waterway.

At landings, the trail features old-school signs offering analog maps and information about the area's history, as well as more high-tech features such as Wi-Fi.

The water trail is part of an ongoing effort to establish the Wausau area as a mecca for people interested in a variety of outdoor recreational opportunities. The Great Pinery Heritage Waterway, Bertram said, dovetails nicely into amenities such as top-level mountain biking, whitewater kayaking and, for winter enthusiasts, downhill and Nordic skiing.

"At the end of the day, Wausau could be like Bend, Oregon," Bertam said. "This is going to be the place. You just sense it."

Funding support from the National Park Service's River, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program is giving a rocket-boost to the waterway's development, Bertram said. The waterway has received a second-year grant, and the funds are earmarked to improve a landing at Clarke Island in downtown Wausau, to help children and families use the trail, and to help the Parks Foundation apply to the National Park Service to designate the water trail as a National Recreation Trail.

That designation would mean the Wausau area would be between two nationally-designated trails. The other is the Ice Age Trail, which already is a national scenic trail, part of National Park Service. That hiking trail is located less than 20 miles east of Wausau.

Meanwhile, it's clear that the efforts to promote the rivers as a water trail is having an impact, Bertram said. When organizers first started working on developing the trail, they began to use a high-tech tracking system that uses cell phone location data to determine how many paddlers use the trail, and where they come from.

From May to October 2023, the tracking system determined that nearly 12,000 paddlers plied the Great Pinery waterway, a 14% increase compared to the same time frame in 2022.

The data found that most users paddled on Lake Wausau, and 90% were from the Wausau area. The system also determined that among the paddlers who were visiting the area, most came from Green Bay/Fox Valley area, followed by Milwaukee and Madison.

Darren Bush, the owner of Rutabaga Paddlesports which presents the annual Canoecopia paddlesports expo in Madison, is a leading canoeing and kayaking advocate in Wisconsin.

In an email interview, Bush said the creation of any water trail such as the Great Pinery Heritage Waterway is "a good thing for many reasons. We get people outside and connected to the land, and in return, they care for it better. We get dollars into local businesses. We bring in tourists from other areas by providing them with a turnkey experience, education about their trail, and hopefully, light a spark that will excite them about supporting that and other trails."

Keith Uhlig is a regional features reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin based in Wausau. Contact him at 715-845-0651 or [email protected]. Follow him at @UhligK on X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram or on Facebook.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Great Pinery Heritage Waterway attracts paddlers to central Wisconsin