Weatherly Borough moved forward with two more contracts for a trail linking the borough to the 164-mile Delaware and Lehigh Corridor National Heritage Corridor trail inside the Lehigh Gorge State Park.

One bid for each of the two contracts - for tree clearing and base trail construction - were received and awarded Tuesday.

Hoffman Tree Service of Weatherly bid $14,120 on Contract 7 for tree clearing, while R.H. Construction of Freeland bid $26,945 on the base trail construction.

“This section is only 200 feet long, but there is a lot of tree removal and excavation work that needs to be done,” said Harold Pudliner, borough manager.

Once the trees are removed, the base for trail will put down, he said. The work is considered part of phase one of the project, which will extend the trail from the borough down and over the Quakake Creek, Pudliner said.

The Hazle Creek runs through the borough past the former train station and meets with the Quakake Creek, where the two join and form the Black Creek, which then empties into the Lehigh River, he said.

The trail will eventually take hikers and bikers from an area near the former train station, where a parking area has been built, to Penn Haven Junction, inside the state park.

The borough has applied for a nearly $1 million gaming grant and an Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization grant for the second phase of the trail, which is estimated at $2.5 million.

The second phase of the trail will be the extension from the Quakake Creek to Penn Haven, he said.

Weatherly’s trail could one day also connect to the Greater Hazleton Rails to Trails, but the main goal is extending the trail to Penn Haven and the D&L Trail, Pudliner said.

The D&L Trail stretches from Bristol, Bucks County, to Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, tracing a historic transportation route that fueled the Industrial Revolution.