On September 30, 1993, the articles of incorporation and bylaws were signed forming one of Park City’s most beloved nonprofit organizations, Mountain Trails Foundation.
The idea was Jan Wilking’s, an entrepreneur and publisher. Seeing the growing popularity of mountain biking, Wilking began publishing the Bicycle Utah vacation guide. As an avid rider, Wilking could sense the impending conflicts as rogue trails were getting built on private property.
“A lot of it came out of the need,” Wilking explained. “We're gonna lose access to the mountain and a lot of people were pirating trails. It got to be a real problem when Phil Jones, who was the director of Park City Mountain Resort, would interact with them, and they'd tell him to go get lost. And he'd say, ‘well, I'll show you.’ At the time I was President of the Chamber Bureau, and he came to us at the Chamber Bureau and said, ‘Look at I'm going to stop all access to the mountain.’ And so that was the start of Mountain Trails Foundation.”
The first item of business was hiring an executive director. Troy Duffin was an attorney who had some experience building trails in the Lake Tahoe area and had just moved to Park City. His $12,000 annual salary was paid with a restaurant tax grant. With his legal background, Duffin first began to enforce the development agreements which guaranteed trails to be built but many times developers left undone. Duffin was also a genius when it came to trail connections and worked on developing new trails to connect the few trails that had been built at the time.
Under Duffin’s 10 years of leadership, the Millenium trail was started and he also worked to connect all three resorts at the time – Deer Valley, Park City and the Canyons – with the 26-mile Mid Mountain Trail.
When Duffin left in 2003, Carol Potter, who had a strong background in grant writing, was hired as Executive Director until Charlie Sturgis took over in 2010. Sturgis went on to serve for 11 years. As the founder of White Pine Touring, Sturgis says his biggest contribution was running the foundation like a small business.
“When I looked at the financial statement, I was going, ‘Holy smokes, how is anyone getting paid?’ We were living by donations alone, and we really didn't have other sources of income. That is what we did; we started operating like a business. The races weren't making any money. Let's find sponsors. And then we were able to buy machines and that really spun us into a really good place.”
Wilking says he’s proud of what Mountain Trails has become and it has accomplished so much in its three decades.
“It was something I really enjoyed doing, you know, just a real passion,” Wilking said. “And I think the community has benefited so much from Mountain Trails [Foundation] that I'm very happy to see that.”
Sturgis is proud of the contributions he made to the organization and says he enjoys the efforts whenever he can.
“I can think back all the way to 1992 when we first ever talked about doing this,” Sturgis remembered. ”And to see us here today, in a building, doing what we do around Park City… I was out on Mother Urban's today and when you sit there and tie all those things together and look around this town, especially looking around Old Town, you see all these trails across the way and the beautiful colors, you go, ‘This was pretty substantial.’”
Prior to a toast, at Saturday’s celebration, the foundation’s current Executive Director, Lora Anthony, thanked her staff, board members and those who came before her. She also recognized long-time board member Tom Peek with a plaque for his dedication and determination to find a permanent home for Mountain Trails; not only housing their administrative offices, but also several thousand square feet of storage space for their summer trail building and winter grooming equipment.
