A Hundred Shovels a Day: Volunteers Just Hand-Built a New Mile of Wisconsin's Ice Age Trail

Here's a good one from dairy country. In mid-September, WMTV 15 News reported that around 100 volunteers each day were hand-building a new 1.2-mile hiking trail through Indian Lake County Park in Cross Plains, Wisconsin — a brand-new piece of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, dug by regular people with regular jobs who showed up anyway.

What happened

This wasn't a ribbon-cutting for something a contractor poured. Crews broke ground on a Wednesday and kept digging through the weekend, aiming to finish the trail by Sunday, after the Ice Age Trail Alliance spent years designing the route. Per the Alliance's own event listings, the big build ran September 9–13, and local volunteers had already cleared the corridor back in April — hand saws, loppers, a picnic in the field. That's a long runway of quiet Saturdays for one very good week.

The payoff is real. The new trail runs through land the county recently acquired that had never been open to the public, and the new route replaces a path that used to send hikers walking alongside busy Highway 19. As one volunteer and chapter co-coordinator told WMTV: "It's just, it's always awesome to open up a new section of trail."

Why it matters

Details matter to the people who build things, and this crew sweated them. The trail is being cut to a 36-inch-wide tread — narrower than the park's existing multi-use ski trails — to give hikers a more intimate experience. Thirty-six inches. Somebody decided that on purpose, because a footpath should feel like a footpath.

And this is how the whole thousand-mile trail works. According to the National Park Service, the Ice Age Trail is built and maintained primarily by volunteers, who are continually developing new segments and improving existing ones. No committee of shrugging. Just neighbors with McLeods.

It's been a good summer for Wisconsin dirt

Indian Lake wasn't a one-off. A few weeks earlier, the Ice Age Trail Alliance reported that volunteers at an August 6–9 build along the Underdown Segment in Lincoln County created nearly a mile of new tread — and spared hikers part of a 16-mile road walk. That stretch also gained the first dispersed camping area along a 30-plus-mile section, and 14 newcomers learned trailbuilding by working alongside experienced volunteers. Two new pieces of trail, one summer, built by hand. If you need proof that the Midwest still shows up for its own backyard, there it is, yellow-blazed.

Go walk it (or grab a shovel)

The Indian Lake segment was already a stunner — the trail passes the stone ruins of a mid-1800s German immigrant farmstead, climbs steep moraines for lake views, and winds through driftless hills, oak savannas, and deep forest. Now there's a fresh mile nobody's boots have broken in yet. Go be among the first. It's about as pure an off-the-clock afternoon as Wisconsin offers, and it pairs fine with a thermos and no particular agenda.

If you'd rather dig than stroll, the Alliance's chapters run workdays all year — the September build only happened because volunteers cleared brush in April. Fair warning: trail work is honest work, so wear something you don't mind getting dirt on. The Off-Course Standard Tee was more or less made for wandering off the pavement, which is the entire point of this story.

Common questions

Where is the new trail?

The new 1.2-mile section runs through Indian Lake County Park in Cross Plains, Wisconsin, northwest of Madison, as part of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail.

Why build a new section if a trail already existed?

The old route sent hikers walking alongside busy Highway 19; the new stretch crosses recently acquired county land that had never been open to the public — safer walking, better scenery.

Can anyone volunteer on the Ice Age Trail?

Yes. The trail is built and maintained primarily by volunteers, whose work includes constructing new trail, clearing brush, replacing signs, and building bridges — chapters welcome first-timers and provide guidance on workdays.

Reported by WMTV 15 News. Details as published at the time of writing.