(soft guitar music) - [Announcer] On this episode of "River & Trail," join us as we explore the Cedar River and its surrounding trails to learn about the river's past and its impact on the Austin region and beyond.

(bright adventurous music) (bright adventurous music continues) (soft bright music) (waterfall whooshing) - [Narrator] Minnesota has been called the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but here in the southern part of the state, we are better known for our rivers.

One such waterway is the Cedar, originally known as the Red Cedar River, so named for the red cedar trees growing along its banks.

(bright music continues) Join us as we explore this river and the surrounding land, learning more about its history and its cultural impact in the region.

(bright music intensifies) - Starts up in Hayfield, very small stream up there, and starts, I think, goes over 300 river miles down to the Iowa River and on to the Mississippi.

(soft bright music) There were some US explorers or military groups that came through the area in the 1840s.

Early 1850s, the first settlers started coming here and establishing themselves about where Downtown Austin is today.

Usually everybody's pretty close to the river, it seems like, but then it took off after that, and then I think the first dam about, you know, mid-1860s, and then things kind of started to flourish for Austin after that.

But a lot of the river had some other towns that were competing with Austin in those early years, like Two Rivers, which was washed away in an 1858 flood, and then Ramsey out here was also seen as, you know, maybe a major city for the county.

(bright music continues) You know, the dams, (water whooshing) they do create these lake areas, and we're one of four counties in Minnesota without a natural lake, so you know, since these have been around for a long time, they have provided this recreational getaway for people.

And there was a steamboat in the 1890s, the Belle of Austin, that was able to go from Downtown Austin where North Main Street used to end.

It used to drop off into this swampland.

So even before it became a state park and the Mill Pond shape that we have today, it was this swampland with islands and wooded islands, and much different than it looks like today.

And they would go up a couple miles upstream by Oakwood Cemetery, and there was an island, and people would have gatherings up there, and then they'd hop back on the Belle and come back to Austin.

And so, supposedly, I think part of it, the operator stopped running it, but there's another story that island was overrun with snakes, and so whatever that may be, but it's just cool to read about some of those ways that people used the river.

(bright music continues) (bright music continues) - This is Schindler's Way Mountain Bike Trail located just west of Todd Park in my hometown, Austin, Minnesota.

I grew up two blocks from these vast woods, and as kids, we spent countless summer hours constructing BMX trails here.

Truth be told, I've been playing in these woods ever since.

Join me as we explore this local treasure on this week's episode of "River & Trail."

(bright music) This modern, well-constructed, and maintained trail was originally created in 2011 as a racing home for the newly-formed high school mountain bike team and was open to the public a short time after.

Schindler's Way Mountain Bike Course was named after Dr.

Richard Schindler, a locally popular active community leader and cycling enthusiast.

Dick's even and friendly disposition was the key to opening many doors of local stakeholders involved, including Hormel Foods, who, along with Austin Utilities, owns the land here.

In an ironic and tragic twist of fate, Dr.

Schindler died in a mountain bike accident on a practice trail near Riverland College during the planning phase of this trail and never saw the dream come to fruition.

The year after Dick's passing, the rest of the Trails Committee members were able to get the project approved.

Using mostly hand tools and manpower, they cut the first three primitive miles of what is now a fully-developed nearly six-mile state league sanctioned single track.

For many, mountain biking isn't just a hobby, it's a lifestyle.

(bicycle zipping) Austin resident, Shelly Thostenson is an experienced, well-traveled mountain biker who enjoys riding at Schindler's Way several times a week with her dog, Betsy.

- This trail's beautiful, especially during bluebell season.

You can see bluebells everywhere.

The trail is flowy, it isn't hard to climb.

It's kind of a flat surface, but the trail's groomed well.

I have been helping as a coach with the Austin Mountain Bike Team.

I enjoy seeing the kids (crowd cheering) out in nature, learning how to bike, increasing their sense of adventure.

There are not very many females on the mountain bike team.

I would love to see more.

On average, there's between five and 10 girls.

I would tell them that mountain biking is safe.

There's a few basic skills that you should know to start, but mountain biking's very safe, and you take it at your own skill level.

Go the speed that you can connect well with your bike and gradually learn more skills.

- See a few riders tumble during the race.

- I have had many bike crashes on the trail, yep.

It does take a little time to get over, once you crash, to get back up on your bike again, but it's just best to get it done and get it over with.

(chuckles) - [Dan] One of the most amazing things about Schindler's Way Mountain Bike Trail is its chameleon-like ability to change with the seasons.

(bicycle zipping) It's never really the same trail twice.

Each ride ushers in a gradual metamorphosis of new color, texture, and habitat, adapting the trail to the eclectic climate of Southern Minnesota.

- I do, I ride this trail a lot in the winter.

Pretty much three days of the week or more, you'll find me riding this trail all year long.

I enjoy mountain bike season the most, but the fat tires have been a great way to stay active in the wintertime.

(soft country music) - [Dan] There is no off season to contemporary off-road biking.

Containing just six pounds of air pressure, fat tires roll smoothly over the groomed snow surface.

The only time the trail is actually closed is during wet periods or for occasional maintenance, usually following a significant rainfall or storm.

Otherwise, anyone can enjoy a free ride anytime.

(soft country music continues) The wilderness aesthetics change so drastically with the season that sometimes it's hard to believe you're actually riding the same trail you were just months or weeks or even days before.

No matter when you decide to ride, the sheer beauty of nature fills your cup every time you visit Schindler's Way.

(soft country music continues) - I enjoy just getting on my bike and coming to the trail, and you have to leave all your other thoughts behind.

You have to watch what's happening in front of you.

The trail is always changing, and you have to pay attention, and you cannot let your mind wander.

So you come here and you just leave everything else behind you, and for an hour or even two, to just pedal and relax.

- [Dan] Mountain biking is my favorite pastime.

There's something incredibly therapeutic about the pace.

You absorb stunning (soil crunching) environmental detail that's often lost from the perspective of a motor vehicle, but you can still cover significantly more ground and see much more than a hike can offer.

It's the perfect pace, and the Red Cedar River (bicycle zipping) along Schindler's Way Mountain Bike Trail is the perfect place.

♪ Now take a look at their big house ♪ (bright guitar music) ♪ Bigger than they really need it ♪ ♪ He got the duellies on his pickup ♪ ♪ When the dealer gave him a choice ♪ ♪ And he lost his job on the build site ♪ ♪ Now he's struggling to feed his boys ♪ ♪ And the red cedar grows ♪ ♪ The red cedar grows ♪ ♪ And the red cedar flows ♪ ♪ And the red cedar flows ♪ ♪ And long after you're gone ♪ ♪ And long after you're gone ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you, Lord ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you, Lord ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you ♪ (bright guitar music continues) ♪ And his wife was his high school girl ♪ ♪ They never left this town ♪ (bicycle zipping) ♪ And it booms and busts ♪ ♪ And heaves and rusts ♪ ♪ But they can't bear to go ♪ ♪ Now they couldn't go if they wanted to ♪ ♪ There's no work anywhere anymore ♪ ♪ And the red cedar grows ♪ ♪ The red cedar grows ♪ ♪ And the red cedar flows ♪ ♪ The red cedar flows ♪ ♪ Long after you're gone ♪ ♪ Long after you're gone ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you, Lord ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you, Lord ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you ♪ (bright music continues) (bicycle zipping) (flowers thudding) (bicycle zipping) ♪ She's been serving food ♪ ♪ Down at Bud's ♪ ♪ He can't stand to see her there ♪ ♪ Where the desperate men sit and drink ♪ ♪ Stare a little too long at her legs ♪ ♪ While he sits home with the kids at night ♪ ♪ And hide the worry on his face ♪ ♪ And the red cedar grows ♪ ♪ The red cedar grows ♪ ♪ The red cedar flows ♪ ♪ The red cedar flows ♪ ♪ And long after you're gone ♪ ♪ Long after you're gone ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you, Lord ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you, Lord ♪ ♪ You ♪ ♪ It's outlasting you ♪ (bright guitar music continues) (soil crunching) (soft bright music) (soft bright music continues) (soft bright music continues) - You know, Austin's first drinking wells, too, for the city were right where, like, the YMCA is today, the old power plant site, because it's close to the river, until they found some other more natural springs, but it was really that industry of using the river to power some flour mills when they didn't have electricity, having a water source nearby to go down to, whether for recreation or to bathe.

(soft bright music continues) Also, the wildlife along that river corridor and the fishing.

The stories are wild of how many fish people would catch long ago, and not realizing that it would take, you know, they wouldn't replenish their population real quickly.

So they really relied on the river, including for mussels, which we educate kids out here about, whether they were using it for food, looking for pearls to sell off, or using them to make buttons for clothing.

So, you know, the river was a life source for a lot of people.

(soft bright music continues) (geese honking) (soft bright music continues) (soft bright music continues) We do know of, like, the first primitive mill was about roughly where the new YMCA is today in Austin on the Cedar River.

Just a hollowed out stump that apparently was known by the European settlers, the first white settlers to come to Austin.

(soft bright music continues) The downtown dam in Austin, right by Riverside Arena, that structure's been there since about 1915.

Hormel took over the flour business there, and they'd had a bad flood, and so that's when we first got these concrete structures on the river, really, was starting around those, you know, 1915.

Otherwise, they were made out of, you know, timber, of trees floated down to spots.

And that was just a problematic thing over and over with floods, you know, of having to repair those, and I think the very first one was roughly where that McAfee Dam building is, the old McAfee Dam.

There's no longer a dam there, just south of Austin.

You know, it's part of these Gregston brothers from England.

So Jonathan Gregston started that one south of town, his brother, Matthew, started this one at Ramsey Mill in Ramsey Dam.

The first one, they floated logs down all the way from Moscow, Freeborn County, the small town of Moscow, down Turtle Creek, to then go down to the spot at the Cedar River there, but that Jonathan Gregston really was the first, I think, to start the dams on the Cedar River.

I think at some point, there was maybe about, you know, a half dozen dams around 1890 on the river, just in Mower County alone.

(soft bright music continues) The Cedar River Watershed, we're a headwaters area, so, you know, it doesn't start too far from Austin, and it has the main tributary streams like Turtle Creek coming in from the west, and then Dobbins Creek.

Two very different streams.

Turtle Creek doesn't change much in elevation, very slow-moving, and Dobbins Creek, very prone to flash flooding, hillier terrain, at least for Mower county.

Those two converging in the Cedar in the south side of Austin can create some of the flooding issues we've had over time.

Maybe too much water coming in too fast, but then that bottleneck effect in Austin with the basin that we've had.

So our Watershed District, Mower SWCD, you know, in these days in Minnesota, we have these watershed-based partnerships.

It's not based on political boundaries, and so we've been doing a lot, making a lot of progress in our watershed to improve the Cedar River and its tributary streams, and hopefully continue to make the water quality better and reduce the flooding, and then in turn, you know, when we can, partnering to improve the recreational access, too.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music softens) - The Cedar River forms near Hayfield, Minnesota and grows formidably as it flows south toward Austin before spilling over the border into Iowa.

Over the last two decades, the city has paved several trails adorning the river from entry point to exit.

These days, cyclists in Austin can access most points of interest through the bike trail system.

Like other cities, Austin has learned the value these convenient pass ways add to the accessibility and livability of a city.

The population has embraced their presence here, frequently utilizing them for both commuting and recreational purposes.

So at what point in history did Austin start to embrace bike trails?

- So I think, originally, the first segment of trail built was the Mill Pond, or the trail around the Mill Pond.

That was back in 1995, actually, so that's been there a while.

- So did the floods play a role in the implementation of trails, the when and the how?

- I think absolutely.

Every time, if you look at where the trails go on the map, you'll notice they're in proximity to the river, and as the city did their flood control project and flood mitigation, they looked for places to put trails, and what better place than along the river to ride a bike?

- What would be the future of the Austin trail system?

- So the city engineer maintains a map.

It shows existing trails, future trails, planned trails that are unscheduled, that sort of thing.

There are some additions scheduled.

I think if you look at that map, what I see is some additional trails, like in the southwest/northwest part of town, because, really, our trails are concentrated on the east side because of the waterways.

So on the west side of town, I think, is some future plans to connect.

They did one out going west all the way out to the the car dealers and things out there on the old highway, so I think there's plans to build more in the westmore side of town, but just connections, too.

I mean, just to connect one trail to another.

Some are disjointed a little bit, but that's what they're trying to accomplish.

If you notice the trails are all connecting, they connect the parks, which is good.

I mean, people ride to the park, or they might just, you know, stop as they're on their ride, and so I think that offers a lot to people to get out on the trail.

Maybe they just want to go to the park, but they ride their bikes.

- Sure.

So Steve, the Austin trail system has obviously, you know, improved a lot in the last couple of decades, we could say.

How does it stack up, though, to other communities, do you think, that have trail systems?

Which most, I think, all communities basically have some sort of trail system now?

- A lot do, and I haven't experienced a lot of them, but I'm proud of Austin's trails.

I think the city has done a great job.

I know some cities have more miles, obviously.

You know, I've ridden up in Minneapolis.

I mean, they're one of the top in the nation, believe it or not.

- Right.

- But Austin, you know, where I live, what a great thing to do, you know?

Just go out close to home, don't even have to take the car out.

So I think people who are out on the Austin trails and know where they are, some don't.

Some residents don't know what we have.

- Right.

- So I would encourage people who are unfamiliar with, you know, what we have as trails in Austin, just take a ride someday or take a walk.

- [Dan] Yep.

- [Steve] Just take a look.

- Sounds like really good advice, Steve.

How about you and I take a ride right now?

- I think we should.

- Beautiful day, right?

- Great, okay.

- Thanks a lot.

All right.

- Thanks, Dan.

(upbeat adventurous music) (upbeat adventurous music continues) - [Dan] Coming by on your left side.

(upbeat adventurous music continues) (upbeat adventurous music continues) (soft bright music) (soft bright music continues) - There's a lot of northern.

I remember a couple years ago, a couple of guys in jon boats when my family was just doing a kayak trip, they'd been out for a couple hours, were up to about 30 northerns they caught in this stretch of the Cedar.

So there's some big northerns, perch, crappies, blue gills, largemouth bass.

There's some good largemouth bass at East Side Lake as well as Austin Mill Pond on the Cedar River.

There's definitely the big carp.

Those probably could end up being the biggest carp.

There's all sorts of fishing, and you might even hook into a rainbow trout that the DNR stocks every spring at Todd Park.

I think there's also a lot of water recreation, and then maybe that's more accessibility to kayaks.

We surely are trying to promote those opportunities and open up accesses like this one to make it easier for people to get in or get out of the river.

I think also, like, this Canoemobile program that we do every year is, you know, we get 600 to 700 kids every year going through it, and a lot of them, it's a good number of them that's their first time ever floating on water in any type of watercraft, and it's probably the safest way to do it with this crew and their huge, 10-person canoes, and it's a fun way to do it, too.

And they learn the techniques and the safety (water splashing) and everything involved, and so we hope they take that and come back out to places like this or find a way to get on the river.

And now that we have a, you know, a local outfitter, too, who lives on the river south of town, I mean, they're doing a great job of providing that opportunity and promoting it as well.

(bright music) - We both have a background of enjoying paddling and all of the different rivers around Minnesota and some in Wisconsin as well, and we live here in Austin.

We live on the river, and we just wanted to share the beauty of the state water trail that runs through Austin with those that may not have their own equipment or may have never paddled before.

And we just think it's a beautiful state water trail we have here, and yeah, we just wanted to allow others to be able to enjoy it as much as we do.

- We started last summer about midway through the summer, so this is the beginning of our first full season.

- We do have regular hourly rentals available throughout the calendar season, and then we do river rentals as well, so we have a couple different river routes they can choose from, there's three of them.

And depending on how long they want to be on the river and what they want to see, they can do a full river trip, which is about eight and a half miles, and that takes anywhere from three to four hours.

Otherwise, there's two sections to that full trip that we cut in half so they can decide if they want to do trip one or trip two.

(bright music continues) We see plenty of wildlife.

(Jake chuckling) A lot of times, there's turtles sunbathing on the logs that may be, you know, in the river.

There's usually a sandhill crane that will be flying in front of you down the river, and it'll stop, and then once you get close, it'll fly further, so we usually follow the crane down the river.

There's bald eagles, there's deer, there's otters.

- [Jake] Ducks and geese.

- There's plenty of wildlife, and it's beautiful to see.

There's definitely always eagles perched up in the trees above you when you go down, and owls.

- That is pretty common, yeah.

(bright music continues) - 2011, when we got the state legislature to approve a state water trail route on the Cedar River, I mean, that really changed everything, because we have a map to promote the river.

We have river level gauges in real time that you can see what the paddling will be like based on the flow.

Is it too dangerous or is that big, medium, safe category?

Or is it too low?

(bright adventurous music) The DNR has partnered with us.

It could be the City of Austin, the county to build these access points, and even the biggest one we just opened up last fall, Orchard Landing, I mean, that took MnDOT, which owned the property, DNR to agree to maintain it, help design it, and the Hormel Foundation with a big grant, you know, our office to help lead the way.

We are trying to keep improving the state water trail, and it was great a few years ago when our partners in Mitchell County, Iowa made their section of the Cedar River about 30 miles a water trail as well.

So now, we have close to 60 continuous miles that are dedicated as a water trail with signage, and access points, and mapping.

- The first time I ever paddled the Cedar River, I was short out of college, and it was the first time I'd ever actually paddled at all.

And so being able to see Austin from a different point of view, being on the river, was really eye-opening to me, because I didn't realize we had such a beautiful water trail and that you could see, you know, old historic bridges and flour mills on the river.

And so that was really what kind of opened my eyes up to paddling and really finding something I enjoyed being on the water.

(bright adventurous music continues) (bright adventurous music) - All right, I got sunblock in my eye.

I'm not crying over this, I swear.

(laughs) (bright adventurous music continues) (bicycles zipping) - [Dan] Oops.

(bright adventurous music continues) (bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part (birds calling) by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(loons calling)