New River Trail State Park

Norfolk Southern donated the right-of-way in 1986. Volunteers cleared brush and laid crushed stone. Four miles opened in May 1987. By the late 1990s, all 57.7 miles were rideable — Pulaski to Galax, plus a spur to Fries — making this one of the longest rail-trails in the eastern United States.

The trail follows 39 miles of the New River, which is one of the five oldest rivers in the world. The grade crosses two tunnels drilled for trains that no longer run: 135 feet and 193 feet long. Three major bridges span the water — Hiwassee at 951 feet, Ivanhoe at 670, Fries Junction at 1,089 — and almost 30 smaller trestles carry the railbed over tributaries and hollows.

Roanoke became a city because the Norfolk and Western Railway chose it in 1882 as the site of its headquarters and shops. The population grew by 22 times in the 1880s. Rail built this city. When the tracks came out, the state turned the corridor into passage of a different kind.

The 765-acre linear park adjoins the nineteenth-century Jackson Ferry Shot Tower, the Draper Mercantile, two turn-of-the-century hydroelectric dams, the remains of the Ivanhoe Blast Furnace and Carbide Plant, the Foster Falls Blast Furnace, and the Foster Falls Orphanage. It also adjoins Mount Rogers National Recreation Area and four state boat launches. The trail was designated a National Recreation Trail and, in 1999, a Millennium Legacy Trail.

The railbed does what railbeds do: it holds a line through country the highway cannot follow. The grade is flat. The surface is crushed stone. You can walk or ride the entire length and trace what the railroad saw.