A file photo from the Buffalo Creek Half Marathon. The event is the Butler-Freeport Trail's biggest fundraiser of the year and has been canceled because the board decided it would be cost prohibitive to hold the race if coronavirus protocols were put in place for the October event.

A popular local rail trail will have to make do without its biggest annual fundraiser.

Chris Ziegler, president of the Butler-Freeport Community Trail Association, said the board of directors reluctantly canceled the 15th annual Buffalo Creek Half Marathon, which is held each year Oct. 17.

“It was for the safety of everyone,” Ziegler said.

She said the board decided it would be cost prohibitive to hold the race if coronavirus protocols were put in place, as portable toilets would need multiple sanitations, runners would have to pick up their packets instead of volunteers handing them out and water could not be handed off to runners on the trail.

The half marathon brought in about $38,000 each year, which Ziegler combined with about $10,000 in donations to pay for portable toilets along the 20-mile trail, gas and maintenance on equipment used on the trail, insurance and the inevitable downed trees or trail repair associated with rain and ice storms each year.

This is an excerpt from a larger article that appears in Sunday's Butler Eagle. Subscribe online or in print to read the full article.