New Extension Brings Great Allegheny Passage Closer to Pittsburgh
Tom Connors
The Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) is one of America's best known rail-trails, winding more than 135 miles through southern Pennsylvania and just into northwestern Maryland.
The plan for the GAP has always been to provide a continuous pathway all the way into Pittsburgh. But as popular as the trail has been with all sorts of users, a few short, crucial segments south of the city remained undeveloped.
Now, a huge step has been made toward that goal of bringing Pittsburgh onto the GAP.
This Friday, June 17, a new three-mile section of the trail along the Monongahela River will open to the public, connecting the trail's current northern terminus at McKeesport up to Homestead, Pa.
This extension means that just a single mile of additional trail into Pittsburgh is needed to complete a grand 150-mile route through rural Pennsylvania.
At its southern end, the GAP connects with the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historic Park in Cumberland, Md., where the canal towpath follows a 184-mile route all the way to downtown Washington, D.C. When the final northern mile of the GAP is completed, adventurous cyclists and hikers and users of every stripe will be able to travel under their own steam all the way from Pittsburgh to the nation's capital, passing through some the region's most beautiful scenery en-route.
This new three-mile section, which passes by the popular Sandcastle Water Park and includes two new bridges over active rail lines, cost $6 million--$1.25 million of which came from federal Transportation Enhancements funding and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. The trail also received significant financial support from Allegheny County and private charitable foundations.
Over the past few years, Allegheny County has negotiated with 18 individual property owners to make way for the trail between McKeesport and Sandcastle.
In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story on the development of the unfinished sections last year, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato described completing the missing links as "a transformational moment for our region, both economically and recreationally."
For more information about next Friday's opening, or the GAP trail in general, visit theAllegheny Trail Alliance or e-mail ata...@atatrail.org.
Photo: Great Allegheny Passage, courtesy of Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.