A Carbon County community has received $1.7 million in federal funding to help create a 5-mile trail from Weatherly to Penn Haven Junction in the Lehigh Gorge State Park.

On Wednesday, Congresswoman Susan Wild, surrounded by Weatherly Borough officials, discussed the funding for the project, which will also protect 1,140 acres of land.

Wild said the $1.7 million comes from the Community Project Funding, an annual appropriations process that lawmakers use to determine projects that would benefit the community.

The trail project was among 14 in her congressional district to get funded, and one of four in Carbon County, she said.

“I want to make sure that Carbon County and all of Pennsylvania Seven continues to be prioritized every year as resources are being allocated,” Wild said, commending the many partners involved in acquiring the land.

The protection and acquisition of the acreage will impact both residents and the local economy, said Claire Jantz, deputy secretary for the state Department of Conseration and Natural Resources.

The 1,100-plus acres and trail will not only connect Weatherly to nearby public lands, the Lehigh Gorge State Park and state game lands, but also the 165-mile-long Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor Trail.

“That will be really transformative for the community,” Jantz said. “It will bring outdoor recreation opportunities closer to home for the community of Weatherly.”

One of DCNR’s goals is to have those outdoor recreation opportunities within a 10-minute walk or a 15-minute drive of every one of the state’s citizens, she said.

Jantz likened a protected trail coming into a community, such as Weatherly, to getting rain after a long drought and all kinds of seeds begin to sprout and grow.

“I look forward to coming back in a decade and seeing what seeds have sprouted here in Weatherly,” she said.

Jantz thanked everyone who partnered on the project, including the nonprofit Trust for Public Lands, an organization dedicated to protecting land and creating parks.

Ellen Lott of Trust for Public Lands thanked Weatherly’s leaders for having the vision to connect the borough to the D&L Trail just five miles away.

The trail, when completed in two to three years, will bring hundreds, if not thousands of visitors to the area, boost the local economy and become a special place for people to create memories, she said.

Borough Manager Harold Pudliner, standing at the trailhead near the Weatherly Museum and adjacent to the Hazle Creek, explained that they hope to get started on bridges over the creeks this spring.

The Hazle and Quakake creeks converge below Yeakle Street to form the Black Creek, which flows to the Lehigh River at Penn Haven Junction, he said. Work has also been done to clean up both creeks, he said.

“You have two creeks that were dead for hundreds of years are now coming alive, and they’re going to create this cold water fishery for fly fishing and everything else,” Pudliner said. “You’re bringing life back to that whole gorge, the Black Creek Gorge, and the water quality is going to be superb.”

Also planned along the trail is an overlook of the Lehigh Gorge, which they hope will be also be a draw for visitors, he said.

“Weatherly is an island. We have our own electric, our own water and our own wastewater here. We’re not a venue,” he said, noting that visitors pass by on the way to other points along the D&L Trail, such as Jim Thorpe.

“Hopefully, this will make it a destination,” Pudliner said.

The borough has received $2.2 million in grants for first phase of the project, and the land acquisition they’re now celebrating represents the second phase of the project, Pudliner said.