{"id":9842,"date":"2015-06-20T02:14:55","date_gmt":"2015-06-20T02:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9842"},"modified":"2015-06-20T02:14:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-20T02:14:55","slug":"amarillo-has-a-project-worth-emulating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9842","title":{"rendered":"Amarillo has a project worth emulating"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>DODGE CITY, Kan. &#8212; <\/strong>The people who run the city where I&#8217;ve lived for the past 20 years have taken plenty of hits of late.<\/p>\n<p>Some of it is deserved. Some of it is not.<\/p>\n<p>But as my wife and I have visited Dodge City for the past few days, we&#8217;ve noticed a project that\u00a0could do some good here. It reminds us of a project that&#8217;s been done in Amarillo.<\/p>\n<p>Rails to Trails in Amarillo was developed some years ago by converting an abandoned railroad right-of-way into a hiking and biking park complex.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve discovered an abandoned rail line in Dodge City, just a few hundred yards from the RV park where we&#8217;ve stayed. It looks for all the world like the Rails to Trails park <em>used<\/em> to look as it coursed through Amarillo for slightly less than 4 miles.<\/p>\n<p>Grass has overgrown the railroad ties and the rails themselves. Indeed, the neighborhood surrounding the Dodge City rail line looks a lot like the San Jacinto neighborhood that borders much of what once was a crappy old rail line running through Amarillo.<\/p>\n<p>Rails to Trails remains a work in progress.\u00a0I visited recently with the city parks department administrator about plans to finish a long-standing project connecting neighborhoods with hiking and biking paths; Rails to Trails is part of the unfinished work.<\/p>\n<p>The park, though, gives the neighborhood along its route a much better look than it had before it was developed &#8212; and for that the city deserves high praise.<\/p>\n<p>Dodge City isn&#8217;t nearly the size of Amarillo, but it has precisely the same kind of potential staring it down.<\/p>\n<p>It runs along an old rail line that ought to be turned into park.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DODGE CITY, Kan. &#8212; The people who run the city where I&#8217;ve lived for the past 20 years have taken plenty of hits of late. Some of it is deserved. Some of it is not. But as my wife and I have visited Dodge City for the past few days, we&#8217;ve noticed a project that\u00a0could &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9842\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Amarillo has a project worth emulating<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[116,323,1409,3815,4104],"class_list":["post-9842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-abandoned-rail-lines","tag-amarillo-parks-department","tag-dodge-city-ks","tag-rails-to-trails","tag-san-jacinto-neighborhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}