GILMER, TEXAS ATV park: a mountain of off-road fun

The 1,800-acre park has 160 miles of trails.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
GILMER, Texas -- For now, it is quiet on Barnwell Mountain. The sun is rising above the pines, reflecting off the hard, red East Texas soil as campers warm their morning coffee over campfires.
The birds begin to sing and the wind picks up, rustling the trees, but soon the hills will be alive with sounds new for this part of the woods.
Zoom, zoom, zoom.
All-terrain vehicle, off-road Jeep and truck enthusiasts and motocross-style motorcyclists have discovered the Texas Motorized Trail Coalition's first park, the Barnwell Mountain Recreation Area, just north of Gilmer. Locals say it has become a popular weekend destination.
"You headed out to the mountain?" a gas station-convenience store attendant named Kevin asked on a recent cool morning. "There's always something going on out there. If it's not Jeeps, it's motorcycles, if it's not motorcycles, it's ATVs."
State Highway 271 serves as the city's main street, so it's easy to see when Barnwell Mountain is open, Kevin said. Trucks pulling trailers loaded with ATVs and other off-road vehicles fill the road.
Gilmer, home to about 5,600 residents and a few oil and gas wells, and Barnwell Mountain are about two hours east of Dallas in East Texas' Piney Woods. Gilmer is a few miles northeast of Big Sandy along U.S. Highway 80. Interstate 20 will get you there about as quickly.
Barnwell Mountain has about 160 miles of trails. A helmet, face shield and gloves are mandatory. All the trails that lead off the main road, which loops through the 1,800-acre park, are designated for ATV, four-wheel drive or motorcycles.
The coalition uses one to four diamonds to designate each trail's difficulty -- ski-hill style. Some trails are so steep and rugged that they are restricted to four-wheel-drive trucks and more physically capable riders. After a recent rain, the trails were mushy, making the four-wheel independent suspension a necessity to continue. The trails would be difficult on foot.
Family weekends
John and Angela Cutright said they make the 35-mile trip from Longview, Texas, most weekends. John Cutright's stepdaughter Linsey Dicks often joins the Cutrights, his son and her grandfather for an ATV weekend.
"We come out here as a family," said Cutright, 44, a newspaper contractor. "We live close enough that we can drive back and forth." A lifelong hunter and angler, Cutright said he would rather be in the woods around a campfire than anywhere else.
"Anything outdoors," he said.
"It sure beats being stuck at home every weekend," Angela Cutright, 32, said. "We'd be all piled up on the couch watching television if we weren't out here." The Cutrights own four ATVs, one a bright yellow machine that Linsey, 14, prefers.
Linsey said she's the only girl at school who rides an ATV. She's a daring off-roader, unafraid to follow her stepbrother up a 45-degree angle, three-diamond trail.
A couple of times, a bump in the trail has thumped Linsey off her ATV.
"I landed on my back," she recalls. "I hit so hard I saw bright lights. Everything went bright, like I was looking at the sun."
Cutright said his stepdaughter recovered with only bruises and continues to pound the hills.
"We have to hold her back, actually," he said.
Managers
Clyde and Linda Stanford, manage the Barnwell Mountain property for the coalition, based in The Woodlands, near Houston. A retired dealer of four-wheel-drive accessories, Clyde Stanford said the park opened about three years ago. The coalition, dedicated to maintaining trails for the public, bought the land from a steel company and private owners to give enthusiasts a place to raise a little dust, he said.
Stanford said about 60 percent of the park's users drive Jeeps and other four-wheel-drive trucks. The remainder of its 2,800 card-carrying members are evenly split between ATVs and motorcycles. In addition to Texans, off-roaders from Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas -- and some from as far away as New Mexico and Kansas -- make the trek to Barnwell Mountain.
"There's getting to be very few places people can ride anymore," he said.
Barnwell Mountain provides an inexpensive, accessible getaway, a nice place to hit the trails and powder a Jeep, motorcycle or ATV with more red dust.