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13 T R A I L S A N D G R E E N W AY S People—like deer, foxes, and other mammals—make trails. In North America , Indians made trails. Explorers, traders, and pioneers made trails when they needed to go where the Indian trails didn’t. Where I live, in the Midwest , most roads today conform to the land survey grid; the occasional road that slants across the grid often is built on an old Indian trail. It may go from one prairie to another (both long disappeared now), follow the ridge above a river valley, or follow or connect other present or former features. In England, with its long history of foot travel, many thousands of miles of trails still exist—2 miles of trail for every square mile of land.1 There are some conflicts with landowners wanting to extinguish the ancient right to travel along these trails, but for the most part the right of walkers to use the old footpaths isn’t seriously disputed.2 In the United States, where the concept of private real property has become increasingly extreme, the battle was lost long ago. The old trails have almost totally disappeared except where transformed into public highways. We have trails, but they’re mostly contained within a single parcel of land. We can go to the nature center or a park and satisfy our urge to hike, but the trails don’t go anyplace. Trails that we can use to go from one place to another, in the way that humans have traveled since humans evolved, are scarce. There are, however, more such trails now than thirty years ago because of a widespread, though still rather thin trails and greenways movement. The most visible manifestation of this is the conversion of abandoned rail-lines to trails. In my high-school days in southern Illinois, few of us had regular access to an automobile. After school, when we wanted to bird watch or botanize south of town, we’d head out along the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio track. It ran past a little marsh where we sometimes found wintering common snipe (Wilson’s snipe, then), through fields, to and over the Big Muddy River. Only a narrow strip of woods still fringed the river, but in it in the summer were blue-gray gnatcatchers, parula, prothonotary, and—in the tall sycamores —yellow-throated warblers. The tracks crossed the river on a high trestle. If you walked briskly, you couldn’t see the river between the ties. Beyond the river a spur line ran east, and the main line continued south along Lewis Creek. A mile or so farther out was a swimming hole. It was below a cliff a little higher than the rest, called High Rock. Nearby, under the rock overhangs on the other side of the track was a hobo jungle, still occasionally used in the 1940s and early 1950s. Prairie warblers nested in the old fields running back from the bluff above the creek. The GM&O Rebel no longer runs from Cairo, Illinois, to St. Louis. The tracks are gone, removed after the line was abandoned in 1977. The trestle —where a friend once got caught by a train, had to climb down to one of the supporting columns, fell off, and got a dousing—has been demolished. This account isn’t a rails-to-trails success story. The line was part of the 270,000 miles of track that formed the U.S. rail system at its peak around 1920 and part of the 150,000 miles lost permanently between then and 1983.3 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) was founded by David Burwell, who became its long-time president, and Peter Harnik. Burwell, a lawyer, was working for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) when the idea of such an organization was hatched. Incorporated in 1985, RTC began operations in February 1986 using small grants from Laurance Rockefeller and NWF.4 Burwell stepped down early in 2001 and was replaced by Keith Laughlin, whose background has been as a proponent of sustainable development and livable communities. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in six other locations, RTC has been involved in many of the rail conversions that have occurred. RTC approaches its mission of “creating a nationwide network of public trails from former rail lines and connecting corridors” mostly by advocacy to the public and to decision makers in Washington and state...

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