This story corrects a VermontBiz error on the construction cost of the rail trail. The actual cost was about $31.5 million.
The old Hardwick rail depot, now the home of the Hardwick Historical Society and the main trailhead for the rail trail in Hardwick village. Courtesy photo.
by C.B. Hall, Vermont Business Magazine
Construction is in the final stages on the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, a 93-mile route from Swanton to St Johnsbury that will add another piece to the growing network of multipurpose trails across Vermont — and New England.
In addition to the LVRT, the Vermont Agency of Transportation announced Jan 30 that it received $1.44 million in federal funds to rehabilitate the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail through earmarks secured by US Senator Bernie Sanders.
The project will improve one of Vermont’s critical rail trails and create economic development opportunities along the corridor. The fully rehabilitated trail will connect to the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail and Canada’s trail network, creating one of the largest regional trail networks in the northeastern United States. Due for completion this winter, the state-owned trail will offer opportunities for a short jaunt or a major trek to both locals and tourists — joggers, walkers, cyclists and equestrians in the warmer months, and snowmobilers, skiers, snowshoers and mushers in the winter.
Design and planning of the trail dates to 2006, when the state, which owns the right-of-way, signed a lease with the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers to transform the former railroad line into a multiuse trail.
The Vermont Association of Snow Travelers launched construction in 2014, essentially serving as general contractor until earlier this year, when about 45 miles of the route had been completed. Since then, the Vermont Agency of Transportation has taken over VAST’s role, extending contracts to four different companies to get the remaining work done.
As trails, rail rights-of-way enjoy certain advantages. Railroads seldom exceed a grade of more than 4%, obviating any need to walk or pedal up steep hills. Since the routes tend to avoid concentrations of population, the peace of nature surrounds the traveler most of the time. And, most obvious to the builders, there is already a trailbed that once supported multiton rail cars.
But on a rail right-of-way that has been sprouting weeds and saplings for years — or decades — transforming the raw material into a recreational trail entails pa lot: clearing vegetation, cleaning out old culverts, resurfacing, putting in mileposts and way-finding signs, installing guardrails where needed, creating the occasional rest stop for weary legs and rehabbing bridges that are showing their years.
In the Lamoille Valley trail’s case, that last chore has been prominent: One of the recent contracts was expressly for “priority bridges.”
Historically, the rail route, most of which follows its namesake river valley, was nicknamed the bridge road, since it had six covered bridges, of which one — over the Lamoille, in Wolcott — survives. It was the last covered bridge in the United States to accommodate regular rail traffic, according to Steve Perkins, executive director of the Vermont Historical Society.
The cost to build was about $31.5 million. Volunteers from both the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers and communities along the route also donated considerable labor to the project. Total costs for construction of the trail itself are difficult to estimate, since it is not yet certain how much towns along the route will ultimately spend on related amenities, such as parking lots and side-trails.
Local snowmobile clubs will maintain and groom the trail in the winter, but VTrans, with some assistance from towns, will handle the warm-season maintenance, for example with occasional mowing.
Towns See Opportunity
The trail traverses 17 towns, among which VAST Executive Director Cindy Locke mentioned Morristown and Cambridge as two that have been “really, really involved” in the undertaking. But Morristown Community Development Director Tricia Follert told VermontBiz that “every town is doing something. They see the financial benefits, they see the traffic.”
In her town, among the first to boast a completed segment of trail, “We have seen an uptick of people into our community, local restaurants, the [Lost Nation] brewery, the little markets,” she said. “They will all tell you how sales have increased. It’s bottom-line dollars.
“We are ecstatic to have the rail trail coming through Morristown,” she added. “You build it, they will come.”
In Cambridge, the town has turned a spur of the railroad into a mile-long path, the Cambridge Greenway, that connects the LVRT with the town’s main village, Jeffersonville, and features a train-themed playground and an ample parking lot.
Helen Beattie, co-chair of Hardwick’s Trails Committee, made it plain that Hardwick was going full blast with the opportunities that the trail will open up.
“The business community is fully mobilized in trying to look at optimizing the increased traffic that’s anticipated” from the trail, which is not yet complete through the town, Beattie said.
“Trail users that stay overnight promise to be the greatest economic drivers for towns adjacent to the trail,” she told VermontBiz. The town is “looking at being sure there are options for overnight accommodations. — campgrounds, bed-and-breakfasts, hotels.”
From the main local trailhead, on the north side of Hardwick village, “you will still need to get downtown,” she said.
Building a safe route from that trailhead to the village’s business district will be tricky, however, since the most obvious route crosses the Lamoille on a bridge that lacks any shoulders for bicycles.
Turning a need into an opportunity, the town, as a safer alternative, is replacing a landmark swinging bridge that has given nonmotorized traffic a route into the heart of town since 1915, but is no longer usable. The town is also working “to develop the green area across from the swinging bridge as a gateway park for people using the trail — for people to park their bikes, cross the bridge to Main Street, have a picnic or enjoy the beautiful river flowing through our town,” Beattie said.
Photo: Hardwick rail depot in the 1910s. Courtesy photo.
Even the village of East Hardwick — population 300, if that — has sprung into action, she said, with a neighborhood association attending to the plans, which include a sheltered rest stop at a road crossing adjacent to the site of another era’s train depot; from there, cyclists can also pedal down to the village for some shopping, for example.
Also central to the Hardwick effort is connecting the LVRT with a local system of trails, comprising about 12 miles, that the town has developed over the last 20 years; a short connecting trail will provide the link.
While the town of 3,000 has promoted itself as a magnet for foodies, the new recreational attractions will constitute “a companion incentive” beckoning visitors, Beattie said.
Photo: Hardwick rail depot in the 1890s. Courtesy photo.
Making The Connections — Slowly
The LVRT offers one more instance of former rail rights-of-way finding new life as multipurpose recreation corridors. In the LVRT’s case, the right-of-way dates to 1869, when the first tracks were laid over the route. Completed in 1877, the railroad saw a succession of operators until 1994, when its final operator, the Lamoille Valley Railroad, breathed its last, as related in a history compiled for the project’s website by Kaitlin O’Shea, senior preservation planner at Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, a consultant on the project.
Not unlike the railroads that spread their tracks across the country in the 19th century, today’s rail trails are evolving into a network of their own in Vermont and beyond. In Sheldon, the LVRT already crosses the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail, which runs from St Albans to Richford. The town of Richford is currently working to extend the latter trail the final two miles to the Canadian border, VAST’s Locke said; for now, cyclists can make an on-road connection to Canada and Québec’s Route Verte, a 3,300-mile system of multiuse trails crisscrossing the province.
Plans are meanwhile in the early stages for a connection between the LVRT’s St Johnsbury terminus and Whitefield, NH, where travelers would reach the existing Cross New Hampshire Adventure Trail, which would take them all the way to Bethel, ME, according to Marianne Borowski, co-chair of a two-state group working toward establishing the link. The 27-mile connection, over the defunct Twin State Railroad right-of-way, has been embargoed — closed to train traffic — since 1999.
In Borowski’s words, the route has become “completely unusable due to washouts and deterioration of the railbed.”
How long might it be before bicyclists will be humming along the link?
“It’ll be a while,” she said in an understated tone that hinted at the challenges of converting railroads to trails anywhere, including the Lamoille Valley, where the route last saw trains 28 years ago.
When that “while” ends, foot-powered travelers will be able to follow off-road trails all the way from Swanton to Maine, or from Maine to Rhode Island, for example — “on a bike, at least,” Locke said (explaining that “there’s no active snowmobiling in Rhode Island or that part of Massachusetts”).
In Vermont, the long-distance routes for foot-powered travel — and often snowmobiles — include, in addition to the Lamoille and Missisquoi trails, part of the Western New England Greenway, which roughly parallels US 7 from Connecticut through Vermont to a connection with the Route Verte in Alburgh; the Cross Vermont Trail, which runs from Burlington to Wells River, with the onward connection to the xNHAT; the Brattleboro-South Londonderry West River Trail; and any number of privately and publicly maintained biking and hiking networks in towns such as Bennington and Hardwick.
When the LVRT is completed next year, about 248 miles of former railroads in the Green Mountain State will have been transformed into all or part of 18 rail trails. Not all of the longer-distance routes are complete, however; travelers sometimes must detour onto roads — sometimes heavily trafficked ones.
Rail trails are typically so-called railbanked rights-of-way, which means in most cases, LVRT’s included, that they have been reserved by federal statute for reversion to active use by the railroad in question — a highly unlikely eventuality.
Heather Irish, communications director at the Washington, DC-based Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, told VermontBiz that, among the 2000-plus rail trails in the United States, “there are only two known instances of a developed rail-trail within the railbanked corridor that had to be removed or relocated to accommodate reactivated rail service.”
The chances of such reactivation in Vermont are thus close to nil, assuring tourists and local users of growing opportunities for outdoor recreation all around the state.
C.B. Hall is a freelance writer from southern Vermont.
