The remaining stretch of the U.S. Forest Service's Maah Daah Hey II recreational trail linking Medora to the Burning Coal Vein Campgrounds in the pine country near Amidon should be constructed this summer.

Last year's work was on both ends of the trail and the agency will put construction of the middle 23 miles out on bid next month.

Engineer Curt Glasoe said construction should be done by Nov. 1, weather permitting. Complete signing and other details will wait for another budget year. About 20 miles of the trail's distinctive posts with the wood-burned turtle effigy will be set this summer by college kids using special grant funds, he said.

The 48-mile Maah Daah Hey II will complement the original Maah Daah Hey I trail, which extends nearly 100 miles from Medora north to the boundary of the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

The trail is on the Little Missouri National Grasslands in Badlands and open prairie terrain.

For now, bikers, hikers and horseback riders can get onto the completed portion of the Maah Daah Hey II trail at the Bully Pulpit Golf Course entrance south of Medora.

The Forest Service still needs about one mile of easement from the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation so that MDH I and II can hook up seamlessly.

Glasoe said the agency also awarded an $115,000 bid to Tooz Construction, of Dickinson, to improve the Burning Coal Vein Campground where the trail ends, or begins, depending on the user's plans. The campground will have accessible camping sites, water and a newly surfaced road when the work is done.

Glasoe said the Forest Service also has hopes to extend Maah Daah Hey II from the campground to a location five miles north of Amidon, where private land and section lines would have to be accessed to get to a potential trailhead at the Slope County fairgrounds in town. A local committee is working on that stretch.

Last year, the Forest Service counted 9,200 users on the Maah Daah Hey I, the majority of them on mountain bikes.

In a related project, the Forest Service has contracted construction of a 10-mile "Wolf Trail," that goes from the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park across grasslands toward Watford City.

It'll be up to McKenzie County interests to promote the remaining 12 miles of trail to reach the community, Glasoe said.