Sophisticated machines that have been used the last three years to count the number of people using the Raccoon River Valley Trail in west central Iowa are showing amazing increases, specifically on the 60 miles of the trail in Dallas County.

Mike Wallace, director of the Dallas County Conservation Board, which operates the trail in that county, has recently reported figures that were compiled after the close of 2014.

Among other intriguing things, the graphs and chartsshow:

--The number of trail users on the RRVT in Dallas County jumped 52 percent from 2012 to 2013. The main reason for that amazing increase is that a new 33-mile "north loop" on the trail was completed and opened on June 1, 2013. There was widespread media coverage of the loop's opening, and people -- especially bicyclists -- came from across the nation to try it out.

--Maybe even more impressive, the number of trail users on the RRVT in Dallas County in 2014 grew by another 44 percent over the number of users in 2013.

--If you add up the counts from the 11 locations of the machines in Dallas Countyin 2014, the best calculations are that there were more than 339,000 people on the trail there in the 12 months of that year.

Officials of the RRVT "have all hada feeling that, 'hey, there are lots more people using the trail'," said Wallace. "It's nice now to put numbers in a visual chart and a graph that confirm that feeling."