NORWAY – After meeting a $56,000 fundraising goal, members of the Western Foothills Land Trust are hoping to install recreational trails in the Roberts Farm Preserve by the end of this year.

The trust was recently approved for $42,000 in grants from the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, Maine Trails Advisory Committee and the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund.

The trust previously received a total of $14,000 in grants from the Stephens Healthcare Foundation, Maine Community Foundation, New England Grassroots Environmental Foundation, and Western Maine Health.

The trust previously planned to put in the trails in 2010.

“We were very, very fortunate,” said program coordinator Lee Dassler of the Western Foothills Land Trust.

The plan calls for about 12 kilometers of trails ranging from 9- to 14-feet wide. The trails can be used for cross-country skiing, bicycling, walking and snowshoeing. The trust also recently approved allowing dogs and horses on some trails.

“It’s not a lot of kilometers for a horse, but it will be very pretty,” Dassler said.

The main access to the 161-acre preserve will be from a parking area on Roberts Road, with a universally accessible trail leading to a promontory overlooking Lake Pennesseewassee. The trust also plans to construct a path into the trust from the rest area beside the lake.

The trails were designed by Mike Cooper, who also designed the trails at the Bethel Inn and Gould Academy. Bob Van Nest, president of the trust, said Cooper has been over the preserve and meticulously detailed what needs to be done for each trail.

“From a construction point of view, it’s going to be very easy,” Van Nest said. “He’s put a lot of thought into this.”

The trust plans to begin maintenance logging in the preserve this winter or early in the summer and create the larger trails using machinery. The Maine Conservation Corps will be on site for three weeks doing refinement work, such as trimming branches and putting in signs, and the trust will also seek volunteers to help with such work.

Dassler said the trust will recruit students from SAD 17 and the Boxberry School to help put in foot trails. She said a contest will be held in the schools to determine a theme with which to name the trails, and major donors will then choose the trail names. Dassler said she hopes the schools will use the preserve for educational and athletic purposes.

The trails will be free to use, although the trust is looking at ways to collect donations on site. The Norway Trackers snowmobile club will collaborate with the trust to groom the trails for skiing in the winter, and the preserve trails will also be the site of the trust’s annual triathlon.

The preserve, on the western side of Pike’s Hill, is named for the Roberts family that owned the land from 1884 until 2000 and operated a dairy farm there. The Oxford Hills Growth Council later sought unsuccessfully to establish a technology park on site and sold about 150 acres of the 161-acre parcel to the trust in 2007 for $310,000.

The trust recently purchased the remaining 10.5 acre parcel atop Pike’s Hill retained by the Growth Council for $40,000. Dassler said that parcel has frontage on Pike’s Hill Road and the trust may add access to the trail system there.

Dassler said the trust has raised $305,000 toward the initial purchase and put a down payment of $5,000 on the additional parcel.