North Haverhill — The Haverhill Selectboard on Monday voted unanimously to request a waiver from the Federal Highway Administration to allow all-terrain vehicles on the Blackmount Branch Trail, a 5-mile route parallel to Route 10 connecting the villages of North Haverhill and Woodsville.

The wooded pathway on a defunct rail bed has long been popular for ATV users, who congregate at a picnic pavilion across the street from its southern terminus in North Haverhill, a neighborhood that also features places to gas up and buy food.

Blackmount Branch Trail was rendered off-limits to ATV riders in 2016, when the New Hampshire Department of Transportation alerted the town of Haverhill that ATV usage on the route violated rules governing the FHA’s Transportation Enhancement program, which in the 1990s provided a $170,000 grant used to acquire the corridor.

Such federal funding is intended, in part, to assist municipalities in acquiring land for pedestrian and bicycle use.

The crackdown also affected several additional popular ATV routes in New Hampshire, including trails in Farmington, Littleton and Claremont. Claremont’s waiver request in 2016 was rejected by the FHA, but Haverhill Town Manager Jo Lacaillade believes the response could be different for her town. The 1.8-mile trail in question in Claremont is accessible behind the community center downtown and travels near residential and commercial streets.

“It’s a different set of circumstances for us because our trail is very rural and doesn’t affect houses and businesses,” Lacaillade said. “We don’t have anywhere near the population of Claremont.”

For the last two riding seasons, members of the Ammonoosuc Valley ATV Club and other groups have been relegated to a series of back roads east of Route 10, including Clark Pond Road, Woodward Road and Briar Hill Road. The designated route, approved in 2017 for ATV use by Haverhill’s Selectboard, ends near the junction of Route 10 and Route 302 in Woodsville. From there, riders travel a short distance on Route 302 and re-enter a trail network behind Woodsville Elementary School that eventually connects to Lisbon and Littleton.

Ammonoosuc Valley ATV Club member Ron DeRosia, of North Haverhill, applauds the town’s efforts to request the waiver, even knowing that Claremont’s had been rejected.

“Using the roads has worked out OK; there haven’t been any problems or complaints,” DeRosia said. “Being ATV riders, we’d rather not be on roads. We prefer to be off-road whenever we can.”

In his rejection letter to Claremont’s waiver request in 2016, FHA division administrator Patrick Bauer recommended alternatives including the construction of a parallel corridor for ATV use. That option wouldn’t be feasible on the Blackmount Branch Trail, according to Lacaillade and DeRosia, who noted steep drop-offs on either side of the trail.

“We don’t have the width to have two different routes running side-by-side,” said Lacaillade, who also noted it would be “difficult” to make such a project affordable.

Haverhill will receive assistance from the NHDOT and New Hampshire Bureau of Trails in helping to ensure its waiver request submission is complete, Lacaillade said.

Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.