Our community is important to us, especially the preservation of areas in our community that need some special attention and also those areas that are put on the back burner and not quite recognized for all that they do. Such is the case with the Paul M. Grist State Park, which is located in the backyard of Dallas County.

Many facilities, organizations and historical markers in our area get recognition for bringing in tourists or bettering the community, but our very own state park is a place that does both and is not talked about often enough.

On Tuesday the Outback Trail Riders donated an ATV equipped with four-wheel drive to the Grist Park and park officials say the ATV, which was attained through a grant by the Outback Trail Riders, will help better the park in many ways.

For starters the park’s old golf carts had simply run out of juice and there was not much that could be done to fix them.

Secondly, the Outback Trail Riders wanted more horse trails, but without the right equipment the park managers had no way of achieving this goal.

Once upon a time the state park had its very own heyday like many other places did in Central Alabama and today its popularity has since trailed off. We are rooting for the state park again, that as one of Central Alabama’s best blocks of preserved wildlife it will see many visitors thanks to this new donation and the new trails the park will create just for equestrian activity.

We applaud the Outback Trail Riders for contributing to this donation by writing for the grant. What an encouraging sight to see an organization looking for ways to better a state park facility that could also benefit the community, but not by way of using community funding, but grant funding.

This is a facility that cannot continue to sit on the back burner during difficult financial situations in the nation, but rather one that we should seek to preserve and continue to better by actively pursuing ways to help it and keep it alive.