Start With Your Heart Walking Trails

Start with Your Heart is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to increase physical activity and improve the nutritional status of North Carolina residents. The program requires regions in North Carolina to focus on changing the community environment and developing policies promoting physical activity and nutrition. A joint project between the Davidson County Healthy Carolinians Partnership and Uptown Lexington, Inc., in 2004, Lexington received funds from Start With Your Heart to establish self-guided walking paths in the uptown area. This project promotes walking as a means of improving your health and as a means of bringing people into the uptown area.

The City of Lexington Street Department installed thirty-one granite markers, located throughout the uptown district, that denote five walking trails. The trails range in distance from .5 to 1.9 miles. Some of the trails overlap. (Click on each map to print a trail and start walking.)

Start with Your Heart has been a very successful program in the nearby North Carolina Main Street cities of Elkin and North Wilkesboro. They were the first two cities to incorporate this program into their revitalization efforts.

Uptown Lexington is an ideal area to walk because of the streetscape improvements that were made in 1996-1997. The City of Lexington Street Department made sidewalk improvements in uptown Lexington a priority in 2004 in preparation of this program. In addition, street lighting that is scaled to pedestrians, curb-cuts at most intersections, pay-telephones and public restrooms make uptown Lexington an ideal place to walk.

An added benefit to this program will hopefully be economic growth. "Our hope is that residents will come uptown to walk, then get a bite to eat, shop, and take care of their business while they are in town. They will get in the habit of coming uptown and therefore come uptown more often which will generate increased foot traffic", said Liz Parham, Executive Director of Uptown Lexington, Inc.