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PHOTO:
A 19th-
century French
village house along
the Katy Trail
in Marthasville
commemorates
a stop of the
Lewis and Clark
Expedition in 1804
and 1806.
mately they organized to form the nonprofit group Mis-
souri Rock Island Trail, Inc. As grassroots momentum
built, the state of Missouri acquired the rights from Ame-
ren UE to build a trail alongside the rail line from Windsor
to Pleasant Hill. This later led to Ameren UE agreeing
to railbank that 47.5-mile corridor. Missouri State Parks
began construction on the line in winter 2015, and it’s
scheduled to be complete in December 2016.
At Windsor, the Rock Island Trail will connect with the
Katy Trail, lengthening the continuous passage for trail
users almost the whole way to Kansas City.
Further west along the Rock Island line, Jackson
County recently purchased from Union Pacific 17.7
miles of line, stretching from Arrowhead Stadium in Kan-
sas City, Missouri, to Lee’s Summit. The county expects
to complete trail construction on this portion by spring
2018. A 7-mile gap will remain between Lee’s Summit
and Pleasant Hill; Missouri State Parks, the city of Pleas-
ant Hill and Jackson County have vowed to complete
that trail section.
East of Windsor, the Rock Island Trail’s greater
potential emerges, and recent developments foretell a
promising future. The corridor crosses the Katy Trail at
Windsor and then continues east for another 144 miles,
where it approaches the Katy again near the Beaufort/
Washington area. Following a massive community effort
involving leadership from RTC, Ameren UE agreed to rail-
bank this segment and expects to turn over the corridor
to Missouri State Parks by late next year.
Development of this segment will likely take several
decades, but once it’s complete and the connection to
the Katy Trail has been established, Missouri will have a
rail-trail loop with spurs covering more than 450 miles
and connecting Kansas City and St. Louis on opposite
sides of the state.
Continuing Challenges
Like many rail-trail projects, the Katy Trail had early
opponents among rural residents who thought the trail
would bring crime and other problems to their homes,
farms and communities. But the economic benefits
brought by the Katy combined with the near-absence of
any mischief has changed people’s minds.
“There was a lot of social upheaval and opposition at
first,” says Missouri State Parks Director Bill Bryan, who
worked as a lawyer on Katy Trail property compensa-
tion litigation during the railbanking process. “Farmers
parked their tractors on the line to block us at the time,
the trail by the way they’re dressed and their cleats click-
ing as they walk across the floor.”
Terry Heisler, owner of Augusta Brew Haus just a few
steps from the trail in Augusta, attributes the bulk of his
revenue to cyclists and other trail users. “We get 80 to
85 percent of our weekend business from the Katy Trail,”
he says. “This place wouldn’t survive without it.”
Rock Island Connection
While the Katy Trail is groundbreaking enough on its
own, the in-progress Rock Island Trail is poised to con-
nect with it and give Missouri a rail-trail system unlike
any other in North America.
The Rock Island line’s history stretches back to 1847,
when the Rock Island and La Salle Railroad Co. incorpo-
rated in Illinois. During the mid-1960s, the company pur-
sued a complicated merger with Union Pacific Railroad,
and it entered its final bankruptcy in 1975. Union Pacific
purchased the corridor, and as the rail line changed
hands, community support emerged for a proposed trail
along the Rock Island line similar to the Katy Trail.
Rock Island Trail supporters had reached a tenta-
tive agreement with Union Pacific to railbank the trail in
1993, but the Surface Transportation Board canceled
that plan when outside investors bid on the corridor. In
1999, Union Pacific sold some of the trackage rights
to the Missouri Central Railroad Co., a subsidiary of
Ameren UE.
Members of communities along the corridor began
meeting again in 2009 to renew the trail proposal. Ulti-
237.7 Length of
the trail in miles
5
Average number
of days required
to bike the trail’s
full length
THIS PAGE: AARON FUHRMAN. OPPOSITE PAGE: MAP ILLUSTRATION BY DANIELLE MARKS
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RAILS TO TRAILS FALL 2016
PAT H WA Y T O P R O S P E R I T Y