For the first time since 2005, the sprawling Hatfield-McCoy off-road trails system will be without the executive director. And, indeed, it was the man who shepherded it from a modest regional project into one of the most celebrated off-road trail destinations in the United States.
Jeffrey Lusk, who has been involved with the Hatfield-McCoy project since its early groundwork in the 1990s and formally became executive director in 2005, has announced his retirement after two decades steering the Hatfield-McCoy Regional Recreation Authority. Under his leadership, the system expanded from just a few hundred miles of trail to more than 1,000 miles of interconnected off-road riding across nine southern West Virginia counties.
Trail pass sales—once a few thousand per year—are now expected to reach around 95,000 riders in 2025, an astonishing statistic for a region that once struggled to attract consistent tourism. Most of those riders come from out of state, reinforcing just how far the trail system’s reputation has traveled.
