Twelve towns across the Monongahela National Forest region have been meeting together since around 2016, when catastrophic flooding pushed communities to think differently about what they shared: over a million acres of national forest. It took until 2020 to develop a strategic plan. It took until 2023 — with Woodlands Community Lenders as fiscal agent — to fund the organization’s first-ever hire. That would be Josh Nease, who spent most of his first year listening, asking questions, and learning just how complicated twelve towns and a wide range of stakeholders actually is.
What Josh is building now is connectivity — physical, as the Mon Forest Towns Partnership develops design and engineering projects linking downtown areas to forest trailheads, and regional, through a new gravel and bikepacking route network launching this spring. For visitors, it reframes the question from where am I going in West Virginia? to how many of these towns can I get to in one trip? For residents, it means seeing their community as part of something larger. Live, work, and play — Josh says those three things are what make the towns sustainable, and the Mon Forest Towns Partnership is working to make all three more possible at once.
Learn more about: Mon Forest Towns Partnership / Monongahela National Forest
About the Author
