Preferred (Community Bypass) Trail Routes…

Preferred Routes are a relatively new designation here in the State Of Wisconsin and denote a bypass route to the original trail route for various reasons.

In this case, this Preferred Route is a road route that bypasses the Village of Hatfield & has the preferred route (Bypass) designation to Jackson County Trails from Clark County Trails to the North.

Hatfield has become a very busy ohv area over the years and this is well known. Hatfield has seen an ever-increasing summer population of mainly seasonal residents and some year-round residents. Some signs in the area suggest the population swells over 5000 residents in the summer and just 50 in the winter season. Not sure if that is accurate or just a marketing ploy. This would make the community the largest community in Jackson County or Clark County, During The Summer.

Preferred Bypass Route For Hatfield…

Hatfield and communities like it, frustrate me. This community was a literal ghost-town with a few bars, a gas station and not much else. This had been a major “off-roading town”, meaning most of the community’s income is from the off-roading community. Now it’s transforming into a “lake” community, as the areas around the lake build up, more people are moving into the community as permanent residents.

town. They knew this was an ohv route, a major connector between Clark & Jackson Counties and decided this was not only the best spot for them to settle down, I don’t blame them in that respect, it’s a beautiful area, but then proceeded to raise complaints about ohv traffic and eventually necessitating the need for the Preferred Route (Bypass) around the community. This is ridicules, in an area that has been propped (Financially) up by off-roading.

There is more and more tiny communities that have enjoyed the benefits of our off-roading moneys and have become complacent and have begun a campaign to run the off-roaders out of the communities. This is the opposite of what has been happening of the past one or two decades.

I can sense a fight on the horizon, one that will be in the courts of law and public opinion on this very topic. Businesses will only allow this for so long, when they start feeling the lack of off-roaders money, we will see how this will all play out over time. It’s Gonna be interesting!

To be clear, you still have access to the community via County Road J, but for how long?… as there is a fairly busy intersection on the border with Hwy J and Hwy K and this mix of a large number of off-road commuters between Clark & Jackson Counties on the road and local and regional vehicular traffic, whoever thought this was a good idea… I think this needs to be looked again before something bad happens.

Before this, ohv traffic was routed along a local street and off-roaders had their own trail along the outskirts of the Russell Memorial Campground in Hatfield and followed the brunt of the vehicular traffic going north and south on Hwy J & Hwy K. Now, ohvers are forced to follow this preferred route and enter that same intersection from a different direction, one that local traffic may not know and that ohv has the right-of-way within this intersection depending on the direction entering. This too, is gonna be interesting at some point, not very smart.

The entire reason for running on the road between the two counties is the lack of an ohv specific bridge infrastructure across the Black River in Jackson County. So off-roaders are forced onto the road routes to cross the Black River in Jackson County and then we are able to jump back on the trails in the Black River State Forest. If we could get a bridge built, we wouldn’t need the road routes.

I honestly think this should be a priority for the area, both Clark & Jackson County’s, DNR & State Of Wisconsin should be on this due to the OHV Traffic Counts & The potential for conflict on Hwy J & Hwy K. It Wouldn’t be quite a bad if the traffic was slower on Hwy K south of Hatfield, but while crossing over the bride on the road, you are being passed at a high rate of speed by vehicular traffic.