enlarge Staff file photo by Gregory Rec

The Eastern Trail is marked with signs along its route from Kittery to South Portland.

enlarge Staff file photo by Gregory Rec

Scenic views of Casco Bay can be seen from the Eastern Trail along the South Portland Greenbelt.

enlarge Staff file photo by Gregory Rec

The Eastern Trail ends at Bug Light in South Portland.

Click here for more information on the Eastern Trail Alliance.

Other groups are planning to link Key West, Fla. to Calais with the East Coast Greenway.

This page at Trails.com gives a comprehensive look at rail-to-trail projects in Maine.

Saco Bay Trails works to acquire public access to recreational hiking trails in the Saco Bay area.

Click to see where proposed Eastern Trail work will be done

Dieter Bradbury is the online reporter for pressherald.com. Bradbury’s beat is designed to engage directly with readers and glean story ideas from your suggestions, Web postings and feedback. If you have comments, please post them at pressherald.com or send Bradbury an e-mail at: dbradbury@pressherald.com

For 11 years, the Eastern Trail Alliance has counted on volunteers and a shoestring budget to bring about its vision of connecting Kittery and South Portland with a walking and biking trail.

Now the organization is poised to go big time.

Design work will begin this spring on approaches to a bridge that will carry the Eastern Trail over the Maine Turnpike in Kennebunk. The bridge is part of a $3 million project that will add 6 miles to the trail and boost its visibility along the heavily traveled toll highway.

Work will begin next month on another project, a 1.4-mile trail addition that connects the southern end of Scarborough Marsh with Milliken Mills Road in Old Orchard Beach.

Trail advocates also are raising funds to match a $500,000 bond issue approved by Saco residents last November and extend the trail from Old Orchard Beach to Thornton Academy in Saco.

The work coincides with a commitment by the alliance, formed in 1997, to make the leap to a professional organization with a full-time paid staff, fund-raising expertise and the energy to realize its dream of running a 55-mile off-road trail through the heart of bustling York County.

“The time has come for the Eastern Trail Alliance to do that, and my sense is the support is out there,” said Robert Hamblen, Saco city planner and head of the trail’s management district. “All the ETA needs to do is concentrate on getting the word out and seek support, and things are going to fall into place.”

The trail, which follows an old railroad bed, now runs about seven to eight miles in noncontiguous sections on the South Portland Greenbelt and through the Scarborough Marsh to the Nonesuch River.

A Yarmouth contractor, A.H. Grover, will start work in April on a $316,000 project to extend the trail from the marsh across Pine Point Road into Old Orchard. The project, which includes a parking lot on town-owned land in Scarborough, is expected to be finished in July.

The organization is seeking funding from the federal and state transportation departments to supplement the Saco city bond and extend the trail from Old Orchard to Thornton Academy. That project, with an estimated cost of $1.7 million, would include a bicycle/pedestrian overpass on Route 1.

But the signature piece of the trail probably will be the turnpike crossing, about a half mile east of the Kennebunk Service Plaza. Some $3 million has been committed for that job, which will lay a trail from Route 111 near Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford, across the turnpike, through Arundel and over the Kennebunk River to Route 35 in West Kennebunk.

Work on the turnpike crossing is expected to start in the spring of 2009, and the trail would open in 2010.Hamblen said that sending the trail over the toll highway, with its heavy traffic, will turn even more heads than a 2005 project that put a bridge over the Scarborough Marsh.

“We felt great about the Scarborough Marsh trail,” he said, “but putting a pedestrian/bike bridge across the Maine Turnpike – that will be an attention getter.”While the trail has succeeded in attracting a few big chunks of public money for design or construction, its most significant fundraising in the long run may be a private grant of $10,000. That award from the Davis Conservation Foundation will be used to make the trail alliance into a professional organization.

Since its inception in 1997, the alliance has been led by John Anderson, a retired computer chip designer who volunteers scores of hours for the organization each week. The alliance pays one person 15 hours a week to coordinate its work, but Anderson said it’s time for an upgrade.

“My goal for this year is to grow this organization to a whole new plateau,” he said.

The alliance has hired as a consultant Alix Hopkins, former executive director of Portland Trails and author of a 2006 book on founding and managing...