News : Nathan's Miles Glow Trail puts Vinton on the Map

Nathan's Miles Glow Trail has certainly been a bright spot in Vinton. On June 9th, a Facebook page called, "Iowa Road Trip" gave a glowing review of Vinton's trail. Sharing the post brought even more attention.

In the online world, it speaks a lot about the reach of social media for this project. At Thursday night's council meeting, Vinton's Parks and Recreation Director, Matt Boggess' said that his phone has been lighting up again with inquiries about the trail.

The Iowa Road Trip Facebook page has 176,000 followers. The post about the trail, has more than 11,000 likes and almost 1,000 comments. Those numbers stomp most of the other posts on the page. The only other post that came close to that amount of interaction in the last 10 days was concerning the Grant Wood stained glass window in the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. That gorgeous window had only 6.6K likes and a little over 300 comments.

For comparison, Cedar Rapids has a population of a little more than 135,000 compared to Vinton's 4,975. That alone says a lot about our little glow trail.

The project's unique design is still receiving attention as the longest glow-in-the-dark concrete trail in the country at two miles in length. Taking only 15 minutes of sunlight to produce 15 hours of glow time, the path lights up its 3,840 pounds of glowing stone every night.

The trail has been recognized twice for its uniqueness and craftsmanship. Baker Enterprises Inc. of Waverly who was tasked with creating the trail had to create special 6 foot wide frames for the trail, then pour the cement and install the Emerald Yellow stone by hand.

Nathan's Miles glow-in-the-dark trail was recognized for a " Project of the Year Award in Transportation in the $500,000 to $1 Million" category for Vinton and Baker Enterprises.

The project also earned Baker Enterprises "Iowa Ready Mix Concrete Association's 2021 Excellence in Concrete Award" for Innovative Concrete.

I have a feeling that if Nathan can see the attention this trail has brought, well, he's just smiling.