Simpsonville—have begun raising funds to
build northward to connect to it. Hoping
to duplicate the results seen in Travelers
Rest, the western towns of Pickens and
Easley arranged to build their own 7.3-
mile path, the Doodle Rail Trail, which
opened Memorial Day weekend. Demand
for green transportation has even been
high enough to support a nascent bike-
share program, Greenville B-Cycle. So far,
the program has eight stations throughout
the city; it aims to reach 15 stations by
2017. Thanks to GPS monitors attached
to the bikes, B-Cycle is able to report that
the GHS Swamp Rabbit Trail is one of the
most popular routes taken by users.
Given all this enthusiasm, it’s diffi-
cult to recall that establishing the GHS
Swamp Rabbit Trail was a 10-year battle
that was anything but a guaranteed vic-
tory. Financial issues, legal challenges and
concerns over crime on the trail all pre-
sented obstacles that had to be overcome.
Yet, if there were a lot of skeptics in 1999
when the railroad corridor was first pur-
chased, there aren’t many left. “Now peo-
ple just want to know how soon we can
extend it,” Houck says. “There’s no debate
about whether we should.”
A Trail for Everyone
If you take the trail north from down-
town, you’ll follow the Reedy River into
a landscape that’s half natural and half
industrial. It’s an in-between zone of the
city that not many people visited before
the existence of the trail, but now is going
through its own transformation. Not
far from switchyards, warehouses that
once were abandoned now offer homes
to local businesses including Swamp
Rabbit CrossFit and Swamp Rabbit Cafe
& Grocery. Farther north, the trail con-
tinues into the low-income community
of Berea, which recently gained its own
distinct identity on the trail, thanks to a
park containing a refurbished locomotive.
As a result of its proximity, many
disadvantaged youth from areas such as
Berea have begun hitting the trail, notably
through the Momentum Bike Clubs pro-
gram organized by Clemson University.
Through four clubs in the area, the pro-
gram uses weekly, mentor-guided cycling
trips as a way to build healthy habits,
confidence and discipline among middle
school students from underprivileged
areas. Every year, a new crop of students
receives loaned bicycles, and if they partici-
pate in the club throughout the year, they
get to keep the bikes for good.
“All of our clubs have been positioned
to take advantage of the Swamp Rabbit,
and 90 percent of our miles are biked
there,” says David Taylor, the program’s
director. “We would not exist if it were
not for the Swamp Rabbit Trail. It allows
you to explore downtown or Travelers
Rest or Cleveland Park. If the trail weren’t
there, I don’t think we’d ever be able to
get those kids safely on bikes to all those
destinations.”
The club based at Berea Middle
School has earned a reputation as a par-
ticularly dedicated group. It won the first
annual Momentum Bike Clubs contest
in 2014 as the club that rode the great-
est total distance: 700 miles, including all
the pedaling done by students and men-
tors. Developing healthy habits like this
among South Carolina’s youth is particu-
larly important. In a collaborative study,
the Trust for America’s Health and the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found
that the state’s percentage of obese youth
between the ages of 10 and 17 is the sec-
ond highest in the nation at 21.5 percent.
However, if you talk to the kids in
the Berea club, they’ll say they’re simply
having a good time. “I joined the club
mainly so I could make new friends and
travel to new places,” says 13-year-old
ian curcio
Cam Terwilliger
Adaptive cyclists, trainers, physicians and
the president and CEO of the Greenville
Health System frequent the trail for work
and pleasure.
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