The last train ran on the Sandy Valley branch in 1985. For twelve years after that the line sat there: rails rusting, ties rotting, sumac and multiflora rose growing up between them, and the bridges slowly getting worse. In 1997 the county park district bought the fourteen-mile corridor from Brannock up to Calder, and the Friends of the Sandy Valley Rail-Trail, about two hundred and forty of us now, have been helping turn it into a trail ever since: for walkers, runners, bicycles, strollers and wheelchairs, and for anybody who wants to get from one end of the valley to the other without a car.

I'm Isaac Krueger, the group's secretary. I'm a physical therapist, and I ride my bike to work most days, three and a half miles each way, so I have a personal interest in flat, safe places to ride. I also take the minutes and keep this page. If you have a question, I'd honestly rather you ask it than wonder about it. Some of the most useful conversations we've had started with a neighbor who was angry with us.

On Saturday, June 12, 1999, we cut the ribbon on Phase I: 4.2 paved miles, from the Brannock trailhead at milepost 0.0 to the old depot in Fenwick at milepost 4.2. It's ten feet wide, asphalt, nearly flat (railroads don't like hills, and neither do most of us), with a rebuilt bridge over Sandy Creek, two road crossings, a boardwalk overlook at the beaver pond, and benches every half mile or so.

About six hundred people came to the ribbon cutting, which was about four hundred more than we planned the lemonade for. The county commissioners spoke, the high school band played, and the first people across the line were a ninety-one-year-old man who had ridden the passenger train on this line as a boy, in a wheelchair pushed by his great-granddaughter. I don't mind saying I had to go stand behind the porta-johns for a minute.

Since then the park district's trail counter at the Brannock end has counted more than 21,000 trips through the end of August. On a nice Saturday morning you can't find a parking space. We're working on that.

Phase I cost about $1.1 million. Most of that was federal transportation money passed through the state, which pays up to 80 percent of a project like this. The other 20 percent, the local match, came from the park district and from you. Phase II will work the same way, if the grant comes through, and if it does, the park district hopes to build in late 2000. Nothing is certain until the letter comes. I'll post it here the day it does. Every mile of the old line is mapped, milepost by milepost, on the trail map.

The little frame depot in Fenwick was built in 1903 and served passengers until 1951 and freight until the end. After that it was a feed store for a while, then nothing, and by 1997 the roof was letting in more rain than it kept out. It came with the corridor, and the depot committee, led by Alonzo Jusino, who worked this line as a brakeman for twenty-two years and rode the last train in 1985, has taken it on.

• Done: new roof, in August, with a contractor for the structure and volunteers for the cleanup. The old station sign, found in a barn, scraped and repainted.
• Next: new windows (eleven of them, all different sizes, naturally), then paint, inside and out.
• Someday: public restrooms on the trail side, and a small room of railroad photographs and things people have kept from the line. If you have pictures or tickets or a lantern in the attic, Alonzo would love to see them. He'll give them back.

For Phase II, the Friends have pledged to raise $52,800 toward the local match. That's one mile of trail, 5,280 feet, at $10 a foot. Buy one foot, buy fifty, buy one for each of your grandchildren. Every donor gets a certificate, and everyone who buys a hundred feet or more will be listed on a plaque at the depot. Here's where we stand:

Our Buy a Foot chair, Angela Denham, has a table at every work day and at the Brannock trailhead most Saturday mornings. Or e-mail me and I'll put you in touch. The Friends' treasurer deposits every check in a separate account for the trail, and the books are open at every meeting.

Next work day: Saturday, October 9, 8:30 a.m. to noon. Meet at the Fenwick depot (milepost 4.2). We'll be cutting brush on the Phase II section between mileposts 4.2 and 5.0, so the engineers can get in to survey the trestle this winter. Bring:

• Work gloves, long sleeves and long pants (there is poison ivy, and there is multiflora rose, and the rose is worse)
• Loppers, hand saws or pruning shears if you have them. We have some to lend.
• Sturdy boots, water, and a hat

Chain saws are run only by park district staff, by their rules. Nobody under 14 on the brush crew, but younger kids can help with the litter walk on the paved section. The coffee and doughnuts are provided by our work-day coordinator, Johnnie McIntosh, who has never once been late and expects the same. After October, the next work day is Saturday, November 13, same time, same place.

This year so far: six work days, 148 volunteers (counting repeat customers each time), about 520 hours of work, and roughly two miles of the Phase II corridor cleared to the ballast. Thank you, every one of you.

1. Wheels yield to heels. Bicycles and skaters yield to walkers. Everyone yields to horses, where horses are allowed.
2. Ring a bell or call out "on your left" before you pass. A cheap bell is the best safety device on a trail.
3. Keep right, pass on the left. Don't walk four abreast.
4. Dogs on a leash, six feet or shorter, and pick up after them. Bags are at both trailheads.
5. No motor vehicles of any kind, except motorized wheelchairs and park district maintenance vehicles. That means no four-wheelers and no dirt bikes. Yes, even on the unopened sections.
6. Stop at road crossings. Cars have the right of way at both of them. The stop signs face you for a reason.
7. Open dawn to dusk. Carry in, carry out.

People ask how a railroad line becomes a park. The short version, as I understand it (I'm a therapist, not a lawyer):

When a railroad wants to get out of a line for good, it has to get federal permission to "abandon" it. Once a line is fully abandoned, the corridor often breaks up: some pieces are sold, and some pieces go back to the owners of the land next door, depending on how the railroad got the land in the first place, sometimes more than a hundred years ago. After that, a fourteen-mile corridor becomes a hundred little pieces, and it can never be put back together, for a trail or for a train.

In 1983 Congress amended the national trails law to offer another way, called rail-banking. Instead of abandoning the line, the railroad can hand the corridor to a public agency or a nonprofit to use as a trail in the meantime, and the corridor stays whole, "banked" in case trains are ever needed there again. In our case, the railroad applied in 1996 to the federal board in Washington that oversees these things, the park district asked to take the corridor for interim trail use, the railroad agreed, and the park district bought it in 1997.

Will trains ever come back? Probably not. But they could, and that's the point: a whole corridor is a thing you can't make again, and rail-banking keeps it whole. If you own land next to the trail and have questions about your deed, please see the neighbors' questions page, and then ask a lawyer, not me.

• The Little Miami Scenic Trail, down in southwest Ohio, follows an old railroad line along the Little Miami River for a long, shady, nearly level ride. It's the trail that convinced a lot of us that this could work here. Take a weekend and ride it.
• The Towpath Trail, closer to home, runs along the old Ohio & Erie Canal through the Cuyahoga Valley between Cleveland and Akron, on the path the mules used to walk pulling canal boats. Not a rail-trail, but the same idea: an old transportation corridor put back to use.

And if you're thinking about riding a bike for real, not just on weekends, read The Bicycle Commuter, Jenna's page about riding to work every day, all year, in a Midwestern city where it snows. A good part of her route is on a river trail, and her advice on fenders, lights and dressing for the cold is the best I've seen anywhere. I send it to my patients.

Trail Map & Mileposts · Questions Neighbors Ask

Visitors since March 1998:


Friends of the Sandy Valley Rail-Trail · meetings the third Thursday of each month, 7 p.m., Fenwick village hall
Isaac Krueger, secretary: [email protected]
Last updated September 23, 1999