Rails-To-Trails Projects Still Remain Popular

Hearing about all those people pouring into Damascus, Va., on the Virginia Creeper Trail made Sandra Tanner enthused.
She stood at LaCrosse, Va., where her family had been living for generations. And she saw an old abandoned railroad line: what used to be called the Atlantic & Danville.
That’s when the idea ignited in Tanner to create a trail from a rail.
It would not be a first.
All over America, old rail lines have been converted into trails. Many boast easy grades that have since become places well suited to walk, ride a bike or take a horseback journey.
In the case of the Virginia Creeper Trail, that’s certainly true between Abingdon and Damascus, as the trail’s gentle slope lies ready for easy strolls or mild sojourns beside rocks, rivers and rolling valleys.
Going down to Damascus from Whitetop, on the other hand, it’s more like being on a roller coaster, plunging almost continually downhill.
That, in turn, has deemed Damascus a bustling tourism center at the edge of the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. Here, seemingly countless shops rent bikes and offer rides to Whitetop, so riders can take the free-fall plunge of 17 miles of going deliciously downhill.
Others across Virginia, of course, have taken note of the Virginia Creeper Trail’s success. And tried to replicate it.
Certainly, you could see that in Bristol, when it was once proposed to turn an old rail line leading to Mendota into a similar rails-to-trails project. Unfortunately, the cost of planning for that trail amounted to a fortune. And, to the lament of many, plans for the “Mendota Trail” went by the wayside.
Other rail-to-trail conversions, however, continue in places like Saltville and Lawrenceville.
The county seat of Brunswick County, Lawrenceville sits in a sleepy state along U.S. Highway 58. Its shuttered buildings show it has seen hard times. And now? The railroad tracks leading into town have been removed.
Yet this abandoned rail corridor lays possibly in waiting to connect with what Tanner has proposed as part of the “Tobacco Heritage Trail.”
If all works out, said Tanner, a state tourism development specialist and president of Roanoke Rails-to-Trails, the Tobacco Heritage Trail will run about 17 miles from Lawrenceville to LaCrosse within a couple of years, providing a new place to ride bikes and horses – or just plain walk.
There’s also a long-range dream that will encompass about 100 more miles of rail lines, all eventually planned to loop around the LaCrosse area through towns called South Boston, Purdy, Christie and Virgilina.
For now, about four miles of this trail – in South Hill, LaCrosse and Brodnax – are open. Clearly, it is rough. It needs a smooth surface of crushed gravel.
Most of it now looks simply like a farm road, with tall grass growing in the middle.
But that’s how the Virginia Creeper Trail once looked.
And, just look at it now.