As co-founder of the Rails to Trails Confederacy, Peter Harnik has visited 207 rail trails across the United States as part of his work on a fascinating chronology of rail corridors that have become trails for bikers, joggers as well as folks just out for a walk.
But Harnik also supplies the background on how these trails came to be, a rail history that salutes the train era. "The rail-trail is laid onto the detritus of a surpassed technology. Today's bicyclists, walkers, runners, skaters, skiers, equestrians and even snowmobilers are merely Johnny-come-lately beneficiaries of a surface network created by radically different people for a totally different purpose," he noted.
"Since they were built to carry some of the heaviest rolling loads ever devised, the roadbed engineering had to be astoundingly precise," stated Harnik.
But train lines that grew like Topsy ran into technological challenges from cars and planes. While freight rail remains a thriving business, passenger rail fell on hard times in this country. As a result, entire corridors went unused, providing an opportunity for trail buffs.
"I love trains and bikes," he told Steve Tarter. Bicyclists powered the rail-trail movement, said Harnik, adding that bicyclists feel they needed a place of their own, having been forced off the road by the automobile.
Harnik saluted the many trail advocates across the country--people like East Peoria attorney George Burrier Jr.--who helped establish rail-trails across central Illinois and May Theilgaard Watts, a naturalist at the Morton Arboretum, whose letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune in 1963 led to the creation of the Illinois Prairie Path, the first rail-trail project undertaken in a densely populated area.
As for what lies ahead Harnik said that there are more than 100,000 miles of abandoned rail corridors waiting for either a revival of rail or conversion to a trail.