EDGEWATER — Even though eager cyclists have been riding it for several weeks, the newest section of a multi-use trail through Volusia County officially opened Friday.

The contractors, P & S Paving of New Smyrna Beach, have handed the trail over to the county after months of working among bears, deer and other wildlife. Officials from the company, the county and neighboring cities cut the ribbon Friday morning.

This particular section of the county's growing trail system runs through some of the most remote woods in the county, and building it was "an adventure," said Randal Thompson, with GAI Consultants, the engineering design firm.

One section stretches 6.5 miles from Gobblers Lodge Road in Farmton, between Osteen and Oak Hill, to a trailhead at Maytown Spur Road. The other stretches 13.7 miles from a trailhead at Cow Creek Road west of Edgewater to the Volusia and Brevard County line. It's a total of 20.2 miles.

Now that it's complete, a rider or hiker can hop on the trail near Edgewater and ride 25 miles to Titusville.

Sue Jones, who lives near the trail, couldn't say enough good things about the latest addition. She and her friend Yvonne Glasser have ridden bikes together for 28 years and plan to log 4,000 miles of trail riding this year. They've had "so many close calls" with cars on the roads, she said, they're thrilled to be able to ride long distances on the new trail.

Jones and speakers at the opening ceremony paid homage to former Volusia County Councilwoman Pat Northey, sometimes called the county's "queen of trails." Northey has been a trails advocate for more than 20 years, pushing to get the a network of trails through the county and connected to neighboring counties.

"She's our crusader," Jones said. "We're so proud of her."

"You're not a leader unless you leave a footprint and a legacy," County Councilwoman Deb Denys said, speaking of Northey's work over the years.

Councilman Fred Lowry, who replaced Northey as the District 5 council representative when her term ended, said he feels like he's "getting to put icing on the cake she's baked."

Northey attended Friday's ribbon-cutting and admitted to being surprised they've been able to get so much of the trail completed. "I didn't think I'd be alive to see this finished," she said. Once one more section of trail is completed between Gobbler's Lodge and Guise Road in Osteen, a bicyclist could ride from Gemini Springs in DeBary to Titusville or Edgewater.

It wouldn't have happened, Northey said, without the infusion of money from the voter-approved Volusia ECHO program and money from the Department of Transportation's Shared-Use Nonmotorized (SUN) Trail Network program. The state program has put up $16 million for the county's trail system and has committed another $38 million. The trails in Volusia are part of much larger trail networks, including the 250-mile Coast to Coast Connector, the five-county St. Johns River-to-Sea loop, and the East Coast Greenway, planned to connect 15 states with 3,000 miles of trails from Maine to the Keys.

[READ MORE: River-to-Sea Loop wins state grant]

Blaine Sutton and Jason Palmatier with P & S Paving said the logistics of this trail were unlike any other project. It included five bridges and much of the work area was inaccessible, requiring them to back up great distances to get equipment into position correctly.

"We saw a lot of bears and deer," said Palmatier, operations manager. Among the other wildlife they saw were bobcats and coyotes. Snakes? "Oh lord, I can't even tell you how many snakes we saw." Their list included water moccasins, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes and even a large indigo snake.

"We also had a lot of rainfall and a hurricane," added Sutton, the project manager.

And there were significant challenges to trying to protect the environment while they were working. To put in a bridge, they would lay down fabric, bring in soil to build a pad for the crane, install the bridge, then remove all the soil and the fabric, to make the wetland look as untouched as possible, said Palmatier, adding, "And we had to do that five times."

St. Johns River to Sea Loop map