WINTERPORT – The town recently completed work on a walking path in Abbott Park that serves as a hub connecting to wooded trails leading to schools and the village.

Residents celebrated the opening of the 1,600-foot-long path earlier this month and the town office has been inundated with comments on a job well done ever since, according to Town Manager Phil Pitula.

The path was funded in part by a $15,000 grant from the Maine Department of Conservation. The town matched those funds with appropriations, volunteer work and in-kind services through its parks and recreation committee.

“It’s a wonderful addition to the park and it’s already getting a lot of use,” Pitula said Wednesday. “We’ve put a lot of work into this and there have been numerous people involved in getting it done. We have so many walkers around town and this is something we thought would be a perfect thing to add to the park.”

Pitula said the project began in 2005 when then-Town Manager Leo LaChance began looking for sources of grant funds to improve Abbott Park. In the two years since then, the town set aside a total of $15,000 in the budget in matching funds for park improvements.

Besides building the walking path, the town recently relocated and updated the park’s playground, resurfaced the basketball court and improved drainage at the park by installing culverts in wet areas. The town also plans to rebuild the infield area of its baseball field and is looking into resurfacing the park’s tennis courts.

The walking path has a 6-inch-deep gravel base and is surfaced with crushed stone. The path runs around the boundary of the park’s playground and upper playing fields. Four times around the path is equal to 11/4 miles, Pitula said.

One section of the path joins with a wooded trail leading to the Smith School, and another section leads to a trail to the Wagner School. Pitula said the Wagner School already had included the park’s path as part of its cross country running course.

Village residents can access the path from Wigg Street, where local student Troy Gaudet built a trail from the street to the park as one of his Eagle Scout projects. Gaudet and other volunteers blazed a trail that included building a log crossing over an intermittent stream and erecting a set of stone stairs leading to the park.

Pitula said the town plans to create additional trails. He said talks were already under way with a local family for access across their property that would enable the town to extend the trails behind the Wagner School to town-owned land off the Stream Road that fronts on Marsh River.

“They’ve voiced a willingness to do this,” he said of the family.