Abandoned Quarries

[mackerman]

I was scrolling around google maps looking for any potential offroading destinations, what caught my eye was that near my home (Columbus, OH) there are a lot of old and abandoned quarries. Most of these have since been flooded but a clear perimeter still exists. These seem like excellent opportunities for short trails; they are large, scenic areas, that are currently not utilized. furthermore, since they were quarry sites, I feel making a claim of "ecological impact" of offroading at those locations would be somewhat ironic to the impact that quarry already made. I know they aren't perfect, they lack elevation changes and are relatively small, but in a place like Ohio where there is virtually nothing, anything would be nice; particularly if the offroading community was allowed to landscape/excavate/maintain these to give them variety and challenge. I'm sure legalities exist too, land is privately owned by companies, does the site need to be protected for X years due to whatever risk, etc.

Basically, I'm floating this concept out here because I see the opportunity but don't know how to act upon the idea. I'm hoping someone with experience or connection will read this and can either advance or refute the idea.

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[Sheepjeep]

Get active your local 4wd community, people are stronger in numbers. In the North East we have a bunch of clubs who have joined a larger organization (NEA4WD), and as part of it there is Land usage agreements between the clubs. Most of the land in new England is private, what little public land there is are mostly used for nature preserves so there is 1 Jeep friendly state park in new. Because of this the clubs have either bought land or negotiated deals with land owners to run Jeeps on their land and through the NEA smaller clubs who have not gotten land rights themselves can be allowed to run the other clubs land.


Keep in mind like you said these are private properties still owned by some company, and chances are they do not want the risky and liability of someone getting hurt on their property or having to hire someone to actually manage it. So that might be a dead end.