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EYE ON:
Northeast Texas Trail
By Maribeth Lipscomb/Special to
Rails-to-Trails Conservancy
Residents of the Lone Star State don’t
often do things in a small way. So, 19
towns across the northeast corner of
Texas have banded together to link a
series of rail-trails into an impressive
132-mile pathway, which they’ve chris-
tened the Northeast Texas Trail.
Running along the Red River Valley
from Farmersville to New Boston,
the path incorporates the Chaparral
Rail Trail, the Trail de Paris, the Reno
Rail-Trail and the De Kalb Trace. The
route passes through grasslands, fertile
river bottomlands and piney woods as
it stretches from town to town, and it
includes unique features such as mason-
ry railroad bridges and colorful 19th
century railroad depots.
“We want to build a way for people
to really experience our festivals, farms
and vineyards up close and at their own
pace,” says Becky Semple, tourism direc-
tor for the town of Paris. Economic
development consultant Tony Eeds, of
Dallas, adds, “Northeast Texas boasts
300 days of sunny weather, attractions
that range from Indian mounds to gin-
gerbread mansions, and the friendliest
people anywhere.”
The trail follows old rail lines with
overlapping names: the Atchison,
Topeka and Santa Fe; the St. Louis,
San Francisco & Texas; the Texas and
Pacific; and the Gulf, Colorado & Santa
Fe among others. The region’s railroads
originally were built to connect the rich
farming valley of the Red River to the
nearby cities of Dallas and Fort Worth.
The railroad produce sheds along the
route tell the story of early Texas farms:
To the east, where the soil is perfect
for tomatoes, Avery’s Tomato Shed still
stands; in Farmersville, known during
the 1930s as the Onion Capital of Texas,
the Onion Shed has been restored as
part of a downtown redevelopment plan.
The idea of an interconnected region-
al trail was conceived by Earl Erickson,
a retiree from the Pasadena, Texas, Parks
& Recreation Department who moved
to Paris in 2003. Erickson’s background
in trail development made him a valu-
able volunteer with the Trail de Paris,
and gradually he became aware of the
possibility for making regional connec-
tions. Research online connected him
to Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s former
vice president of trail development,
Jeff Ciabotti, who told him about the
railbanked corridor stretching east from
Paris to Bowie County near the Texas-
Arkansas border. To the west, Erickson
found a group of volunteers who had
created the 50-mile Chaparral Trail.
To link the segments to form one
long trail, Erickson joined trail advocate
Kathryn Nichols, a community plan-
ner with the National Park Service, to
organize a group to move the project
forward. They recruited mayors from
several towns, board members from
local trail groups, engineering firms and
bicycle shops, officials from regional and
state agencies, and a host of interested
citizens. Together, this ad hoc group
hoped to find a way to duplicate the
success of Missouri’s 237-mile Katy Trail
State Park. In 2010 they invited the Katy
Trail Under Construction:
Northeast
Texas Trail
Location:
Farmersville to New
Boston, Texas
Used Railroad Corridor:
Texas and
Pacific, and others
Length:
132 miles
Proposed Surface:
Asphalt
Bridge: Greg Hicks; Inset: Jimmy Don Nicholson
Trail’s coordinator, Dawn Fredrickson,
to Texas to talk about her experience.
Her story helped make the project seem
possible, and momentum grew for the
Northeast Texas Trail.
Nichols has helped identify and
secure state and federal grants for the
project, funds that have allowed towns
along the route to build, expand and
improve their portions of the trail.
“We’ve seen a real snowball effect
lately—Reno added a mile of trail this
fall, and Paris and Lamar County just
received an additional $200,000 each
from the federal Recreational Trails
Program,” she says.
Currently, the entire trail can be
hiked and ridden on horseback, or on
mountain bike by intrepid users—land-
owners occasionally fence across it, and
some creek bridges need to be rebuilt.
One of the Northeast Texas Trail group’s
main goals is to make the entire distance
accessible by road bike, which trail advo-
cates hope will lure more visitors.
“Our local bed-and-breakfast already
sees increased business from mountain
bikers who use the Chaparral Trail,” says
Jeremy Wilson, mayor of Blossom. “It
makes sense that connecting the trails
across the region will bring more visitors
to all our towns.”
For more information, visit
www.
netexastrail.org
, or join the Northeast
Texas Trail Facebook page at
www.
facebook.com/groups/netexastrail
.
This span, south of Roxton,
Texas, is one of several 19th
century masonry railroad
bridges on the route of
the planned Northeast
Texas Trail. The trail is the
brainchild of Paris resident
Earl Erickson (below),
shown here working on
the Trail de Paris, one of
several segments of the
regional path.