Trip of the week: walking America’s railroads, from coast to coast

It’s an idea that has been in the works for 50 years – a scenic trail following the routes of disused railways across the US, from Washington DC, close to the Atlantic coast, to the Pacific coast west of Seattle, a journey of 3,700 miles.

By May 2019, when its official route was finally announced, the Great American Rail-Trail was more than half complete, says Mike MacEacheran in The Sunday Telegraph. Now you can walk or cycle along huge sections of it, through 12 states. The landscapes it encompasses are beautiful, but equally engaging are the towns and cities, many of which have suffered economically since the decline of the railroads, but which have fascinating histories, and sometimes stunning relics of “faded industry”.

The longest completed section of the trail runs for 335 miles from Washington DC to Pittsburgh, passing the historic steel mills of the Southern Iron Valley, and Fallingwater, the house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1935, which is often considered his masterpiece. In Ohio, it weaves through the heart of Swartzentruber Amish country, whose people still speak Pennsylvania German as their first language.

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And in Iowa, there’s a “gorgeous” stretch along the Union Pacific Railroad that includes the spectacular High Trestle Trail Bridge. Spanning the Des Moines River, the bridge is crowned by 41 steel frames “of Escher-like wizardry”, designed to mimic the view through a mine shaft.

In Nebraska, the trail follows the old Chicago & North Western railroad across the prairie and along the Niobrara River, offering “a glimpse of echoingly empty small-town America” along the way. In Montana, it climbs into the Rocky Mountains.

And in Washington state, it crosses the Puget Sound in Seattle, before skirting the northern fringes of the Olympic National Park, one of the country’s largest temperate rainforests, and arriving, finally, at the Pacific at La Push, a village of the Quileute tribe.

See railstotrails.org for more information.