TERRE HAUTE — Griffin Park opened in Terre Haute, Ind., last month with 300 acres of bike trails that jump dirt, swish through woods and float on water — yes, float — as the perfect salute to a beloved son and brother who died in an explosion in Afghanistan.

It's only right that the park, built entirely from more than $1.5 million in donations and almost 20,000 hours of volunteer labor, is drawing people from across the country.

Chalk it up to the late U.S. Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin, a friendly guy who was “good at getting people to ride with him,” said his dad, Gene Griffin.

Gene saidsays he and his wife couldn't understand Dale's impulse, at age 25, to leave a good-paying job in Indianapolis to join the service.

Why not, they suggested, finish the 10 credit hours to complete his college degree? Dale replied, “I feel like I can make a difference.”

What they did understand was Dale's love of mountain biking, which Gene and his wife, Dona, had fostered among their three sons while Gene worked through a knee injury.

It took them on family riding trips to the slick rocks of Moab, Utah, along with North Carolina and the forests of Brown County, Ind., barely an hour and a half drive from home.

The boys also would bike on a bunch of informal horse trails where a coal mine had ceased operations in the 1960s.

“It wasn't necessarily legal, but we did it,” said Dale's brother, Clint. “It (the property) wasn't being used to its full potential.”

Flash forward to the grief that the Griffin family waded through after Dale died in 2009. Searching for a way to honor him, they remembered his pledge to serve. And their love of riding. They took that former mine and turned it not only into a tribute to all military veterans, but a regional destination.

The floating bike trail is something you won't find anywhere in Michiana. It dares riders with a 2-foot-wide aluminum path like an elongated pier across a 200-foot section of a lake. Yes, some have splashed in, Gene said.

And there's a lake jump among the 60 bike features. Between the towering woods, the mine had left a 7-acre clearing with piles of discarded soil from its operations, which turned out to be “absolutely perfect” for shaping a playground of bike tricks, said Vigo County Parks Superintendent Kara Kish, including a terrain park, dirt jumps, a dual slalom race course and a pump track with a series of undulating humps.

The terrain is designed to be progressively more difficult.

“You can start as a beginner, work on your skills and move up,” Clint Griffin said. “My 3-year-old was out there on a push bike (without pedals) riding on the trails. So, if you're better than a 3-year-old.”

Trails add up to 15 miles, which could grow to 25 miles in the next two years.

It's much bigger than the new Big Marsh Bike Park in southeast Chicago that I wrote about last week, which has 8 miles of trail on 45 acres.

Across from Griffin Park sits Fowler Park Wilderness Area, named after the first person from Vigo County who was killed in the Vietnam War, Eugene Russell Fowler.

It boasts 463 acres with a collection of lakes and ponds, plus camping, hiking and a pioneer village.

Gene says it's pure “God-cidence” that Griffin Park sits on the former Chieftain Mine — and that Dale's battalion was known as the “Chieftains.”

Out of the blue, he said, someone recently created a 2-by-5-foot granite monument with a collage of photos of Griffin and brought it to the park. Some Australians want to add a ropes course. Another man suggested a rope-drawn trolley across the lake. Just talk for now. But, since June, a traffic counter has recorded 27,000 vehicle visits.

Dale, who'd also tried scuba, skydiving and martial arts, would surely smile.

“He was definitely intense,” Clint said. “It was always hard trying to keep up with him and my older brother. They were the ones who were willing to do the crazy stuff.”