Tree clearing and earthwork for the first phase of Weatherly Borough’s walking/hiking trail connecting to the Lehigh Gorge State Park and the 165-mile Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor Trail is complete.

Borough council last month awarded contracts to Hoffman Tree Service and B.T. Adams LLC for the work on the first 900 feet of trail from the trailhead near the museum.

Borough Manager Harold Pudliner said the first section is complete and showed before and after images of the work to council members on Monday night.

The trail runs through a wooded area to Hazle Creek, where it will eventually cross over with a bridge below the cul-de-sac of Yeakle Street, according to the borough website.

From there, the trail will run along Hazle Creek to the confluence of the Hazle, Quakake and Black creeks, where a second bridge will be located, a project update stated.

“We are writing a grant right now to the do the bridges,” Pudliner said. “The bridges have been engineered. They’re ready to give the word to the manufacturer and they could build them.

“We just have to submit a grant to have that done.”

The next phase of the project will pickup on the other side of the Quakake Creek and the trail will continue for another 4 miles, winding along Black Creek to the Lehigh Gorge State Park and the Anthracite Section of the D&L Trail.

The trail project is funded by more than $2.2 million in grants for the first phase and received another $1.7 million in federal funding last year.