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KINGSTON TWP. – For some people, the expansion of the Back Mountain Trail will have meaning far beyond the usefulness, the recreational opportunities and the environmental implications.

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John Koch, a professor at Wilkes University, rides his bike to work on the Back Mountain Trail. He also helped with the trail’s design.

Aimee Dilger/THE TIMES LEADER

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For Wilkes-Barre resident Richard Achuff, it will allow him the solace for which he’s been waiting 30 years.

On Dec. 6, 1972, Achuff’s son fell into Toby Creek in Shavertown. “They found his body down here by Harris Hill Road,” Achuff said Wednesday.

Achuff is dedicating a bench at the trail’s entrance off Harris Hill Road to the memory of his son and wife, who died recently. “I thought that would be as good as any place to put it.”

He still has friends in Shavertown from when his family used to live there, so he plans on using the trail and hopes it keeps his family’s memory alive in the area.

For David and Judy Rimple, who shepherded the project since Judy dreamed it up almost two decades ago, it will stand as a testament to thinking big and sticking to it.

“Some people just look at things and say, ‘No,’ ” she said on Wednesday afternoon after announcing the opening of the township’s section of the trail. “Others look at things and say, ‘Hmmm …’ ”

At a cost of about $506,000, Pikes Creek Site Contractors created the new portion, which included cutting a flat section out of a slope east of the creek, installing rock retaining walls, laying a crushed-stone surface and installing signs, said company superintendent Jeff Lawson.

Project manager Harry Owens noted work went from May to October. A section above the highway was supposed to be finished as an elevated boardwalk, but the idea was scrapped because it would have required annual maintenance, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation project manager Tim Grabowski said.

Judy Rimple’s dreams haven’t ended with the new section, which connects to the existing trail at the Trucksville Volunteer Fire Co.’s social hall on Carverton Road and continues north, paralleling state Route 309, for about two miles.

“Right now, we stop right in the middle of the woods,” she said, while a right-of-way situation is being resolved. It will eventually end at Lower Demunds Road. The southern trailhead is in Luzerne near the Knights of Columbus building on Parry Street.

But Rimple sees the trail eventually expanding south to link with the trail system throughout the levees along the Susquehanna River and north to Misericordia University and Dallas School District facilities.

“It will be a lot better when we get it to Misericordia,” she said, because it could then link with the county’s bus transit system.

She foresees the trail spurring recreation-related commerce, with families walking to restaurants and shops catering to bicyclists. “Already, when I start to sell this thing, I say, ‘You can get to Starbucks, you can get to Pizza Perfect. … You can stop; you can shop,’” she said.

State Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Lehman Township, said those effects have borne out at recreation projects she’s seen in Seattle and in western Pennsylvania. “The value of them has proven over the long run,” she said. “I do believe the value and the economic impact can be significant.”

The idea is big, but Rimple said it simply needs some cultivation.

“There are ways to do it,” she said. “Now, it’s just a matter of we have to show people how to do it.”

For more photographs of the Back Mountain Trail, go to www.timesleader.com.

Rory Sweeney, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7418.