A resident of Travelers Rest, Cooper
has seen several people using the trail to
get in shape or to rehabilitate after knee
or hip surgery. “We couldn’t be more
pleased with how it’s turned out. We see
the Swamp Rabbit Trail as one of the best
investments that GHS has ever made,”
Cooper says. “I even met my husband on
the trail,” she adds with a laugh. “So it’s
certainly changed my life.”
The GHS Swamp Rabbit Trail inherits
the second half of its colorful name from
the fact that most of its length is built on
the bed of the old “Swamp Rabbit” rail-
road that followed the basin of the Reedy
River, its uneven tracks giving the train a
distinct “hopping” quality. However, the
soot-covered engines that once churned
along this marshy stretch of ground are
long gone. Now the corridor focuses on
human energy: Instead of burning coal or
diesel, it’s burning calories.
Game Changer
An expert in public health, Furman
University Professor Julian Reed has stud-
ied the trail for three years and has con-
cluded that it’s been a successful “public
health intervention.”
“According to the CDC, the most
common physical activity is walking,
so to have a built environment like this
enables people to do that very conve-
niently,” Reed says. “At the end of the
day, our bodies don’t care how we expend
calories, they just want us to expend
them. If you do it through active trans-
portation, it’s a great way to increase your
physical activity at the same time that you
can get from point A to point B.”
If our bodies don’t care how we burn
calories, then the trail makes thoughtful
use of that fact. In addition to the walking
and biking it enables, the GHS Swamp
Rabbit connects to football and baseball
fields, tennis and volleyball courts, golf
courses, hiking trails and a local YMCA.
Recently, it’s even been connected to a
Travelers Rest bike skills course, a series
of reddish dirt hills that allows people
to hone their mountain biking or BMX
(bicycle motocross) expertise. But ulti-
mately, the trail’s most important
function isn’t about becoming a
high-caliber athlete or shedding as
many pounds as possible. Rather, it
offers a way for those who wouldn’t
normally be active to get moderate
exercise—like a brisk walk.
“Just being moderately active is
much more important than people
used to think,” Reed says. “Low
levels of cardiorespiratory fitness
have been identified in the last three
to four years as one of the greatest
contributors to mortality.” A 2012
study reported in
The Lancet
, one of
the world’s leading medical journals,
estimates that 5.3 million deaths
around the world can be attributed to lack
of physical activity—a rate that suggests it
may be just as hazardous as smoking.
One reason the Swamp Rabbit Trail
has been embraced so intensely is that it
provides an outlet for healthy recreation
that is unique in Greenville County. In
2014, Smart Growth America ranked the
Greenville Metro area as one of the top
three cities suffering from urban sprawl,
making opportunities for walking and bik-
ing rare. Viewed in isolation, this statistic
might seem daunting to overcome, but
there’s a change in the air in Greenville
County; you can feel it.
No place has caught Swamp Rabbit
fever more intensely than Travelers Rest,
which was once nothing more than a
dusty “drive-through town.” Thanks to all
the visitors brought by the GHS Swamp
Rabbit, it’s now become a hot destina-
tion, with a flurry of restaurants and bars
cropping up along the bike path. Many
are named in honor of the trail, such as
the Swamp Rabbit Brewery & Taproom.
Others have monikers that refer to bicycles
or the old railroad—Whistlestop at the
American Café, for example, and Tandem
Creperie and Coffeehouse, with a tan-
dem bicycle hanging outside the door.
Greenville County estimates that its econ-
omy was boosted by $6.7 million from
2012 to 2013 because of the trail. And
most of those dollars came to the busi-
nesses through travelers on foot or bicycle.
“When people saw what was happen-
ing with the trail, it got a broad conver-
sation started about what was possible
from a community standpoint,” says Ty
Houck, director of Greenways, Natural
and Historic Resources for the Greenville
County Department of Parks, Recreation
and Tourism. “After other towns saw
what a trail could do, everyone said, ‘Hey
this works. We want it in our town.’ ”
Trail fever has spread through the
region like wildfire. Greenville has ear-
marked $2.5 million for a new 4.2-
mile southward extension, and the next
two towns to the south—Mauldin and
Left to right:William Doyle and Ty Houchand
The GHS Swamp Rabbit Trail has spurred the
creation of new restaurants and bars in Traveler’s
Rest—now a popular destination for trail users.
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