We get this question from time to time, and it’s often hard for people to visualize the trail system and the property it sits on, so we thought we’d try to put it into perspective.
The “trails” at Lehigh Portland Trails consist of around 13 miles of wide gravel trails and singletrack nature trails. How much is that? Some comparisons:
- The length of the Southwind Rail Trail, between Iola and Humboldt, is about 6.5 miles. So walking all the trails at Lehigh would be about the same as walking from Iola to Humboldt and back.
- Running tracks at schools are usually 400 meters. or about 1/4 mile, long. So running all the trails at Lehigh would be about the same as running around the track 52 times.
- A “marathon” distance is typically 26.2 miles, so all the Lehigh trails together make up about a half-marathon distance.
- For adult men, an average walking step is about 30 inches, so an average man would need to take about 27,480 steps to walk the entire Lehigh trail system. For adult women, the average step is 26 inches, so about 31,680 steps total. For kids, considerably more, depending on age and height.
- An average adult typically walks a mile in 15 to 20 minutes. So 13 miles would require 195 to 260 minutes, or 3.3 to 4.3 hours, nonstop. With regular breaks and stopping to look at scenery, probably 4-5 hours.
- The Lehigh Portland Trails are the largest mountain bike trail system in Southeast Kansas.
The size of the entire property that Lehigh Portland Trails sits on is about 350 acres (including the quarry lake, south shore, and hay meadows). How big is that?
- An acre is 43,560 square feet. So 350 acres is over 15 million square feet (15,236,000).
- 350 acres is just over half a square mile.
- The city of Iola covers an area of 4.81 square miles (including most of the Lehigh property), so Lehigh is about 1/9 the size of the city.
- All of the Iola city parks together are about 90 acres. So the Lehigh property is nearly 4 times the size of the entire Iola city park land.
- A football field is about 1.3 acres in size. So about 265 football fields would fit within the Lehigh property. Or about 200 soccer fields (a soccer field is slightly bigger than a football field).
- In area, the Lehigh property is slightly larger than the Allen County town of Moran (0.42 square miles), and slightly smaller than Gas (0.73 sq mi) and La Harpe (0.82 sq mi).
- The Lehigh Quarry Lake (roughly 140 acres) is the largest body of water (other than rivers and creeks) in Allen County.
- The Lehigh Portland Trails portion of the property (excluding the quarry lake, south shore, and hay meadows) is roughly 140 acres).
- The Lehigh Portland Trails are the largest publicly-accessible natural space in Allen County.