Forget Route 66, this walking route is the best way to see the real America

When I think of Seattle, a city I know better than any other in the US, my mind grasps for several things. The flying saucer-meets-Jetsons burst of the Space Needle. The sea-to-summit view of snow-hazed Mount Rainier’s strato volcano from Kerry Park. Zeeks Pizza in Queen Anne and Red Mill Burgers in Phinney Ridge. There’s pretty decent coffee, too.

What I don’t consider is the city’s abandoned railroad heritage. Or the quietly overlaid track that waltzes through Ballard and Fremont, then embeds itself along Salmon Bay and Lake Washington. And certainly not how it – and other defunct railroads across the US – can be better used to link communities, provide environmental benefits, promote closer ties with nature, reduce air and noise pollution and pump up street life. 

But grasp all that and you’re halfway to understanding the excitement behind the Great American Rail-Trail, an ambitious ocean-to-ocean greenway on repurposed iron horse tracks that run from Washington’s Pacific coast west of Seattle all the way to Washington DC.

Why the Great American Rail-Trail was founded

“This vision has been kicking around since the late 1980s,” says Kevin Belanger, Great American Rail-Trail project manager. “Isn’t there a better use for these railroads than letting them fall into disrepair? That’s the question we’re now finally starting to answer.”

The upshot is a 3,700-mile cross-country route designed not just for locals and visitors to walk and bike, but to help preserve towns along the way, many of which have struggled economically since the railroad closures of the past century. So far, the multi-use trail is more than 53 per cent complete, with 2,025 miles of existing trails tracked and tarmacked across 12 states and 1,675 to go. In fact, 70 per cent of the trail east of the Mississippi is finished, mainly through the industrial heartlands of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. 

Belanger insists it’s not intimidating, though. Even if it will take two to four months to cycle, depending on your speed, and twice that if your preferred walking pace is around 3mph. “This is the kind of experience you can’t have otherwise in America. The railroads are a different story to Route 66. And the amount of people that want to cycle or walk across parts of the country is larger than it ever has been.”

70 per cent of the trail east of the Mississippi is finished, mainly through the industrial heartlands of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois Credit: miloallerton

That doesn’t sound quite so far-fetched when learning that trail use in the US has been up by 200 per cent since the pandemic. Also, the Rail-Trail is estimated to generate 25.6 million trips country-wide and $229.4 million (£193.8 million) in annual visitor spend once completed. Back in Seattle, where I holidayed and tested out the Rail-Trail this summer, the figure is an equally stirring 1.6 million journeys and $24.9 million across Washington.

I started on the glinting seashore of Golden Gardens Park. Yachts owned by Microsoft and Amazon executives were jammed in a chevron pattern and the hidden railroad lay tucked beside an overgrown tilt of forest. This was the start of the Burke-Gilman Trail, an 18-mile sliver on the abandoned Great Northern, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway corridor that feeds into the larger east-west spine of the Great American Rail-Trail. I felt my shoulders ease as I hit the tracks, blending into an unremembered world of freight, timber and toil.

The amount of people that want to cycle or walk across parts of the country is larger than it ever has been Credit: Scott T Stark

My next stop on the pathway had plenty more urban grit. This was Ballard, a once working-class waterfront settled by Nordic immigrants and Scandinavian fishermen in the 19th-century. Here there’s now a salvo of bike fitters, coffee shops, ice-cream parlours and craft breweries – those looking for a concentrated dose of good times descend in throngs. This being America, too, the route’s subsection has its own bike lawyer doorstepping the path.

“This is the kind of experience you can’t have otherwise in America”

Along the Rail-Trail, all stratas of Seattle society are evident: the Google campus in Fremont; Fishermen’s Terminal dock, home of a fleet of trawlers and crab boats from Discovery’s Deadliest Catch; tent encampments and broken-down RVs along the Fremont Cut canal, a snapshot of the homeless epidemic the city has been dealing with since the pandemic. By lunchtime, a swell of ear-budded joggers, e-bikers and e-skateboard users had crept on to the track, too.

The lines and visible relics of faded industry are, from start to finish, the primary feature of a trip along the Rail-Trail. A few miles east from Ballard, walking the rail lines alongside Lake Union, it’s a straightforward path to Gasworks Park, artfully reborn as a panoramic city hangout. Though even the strange steampunk beauty of the former Seattle Gas Light Company, a mini Chernobyl from the early 1900s, couldn’t quite distract from the exhilaration of droning seaplanes taking off and coming in to land from the nearby terminal.

A mural on the Burke-Gilman Trail

In the next decade or so, the whole Rail-Trail will be complete and as my time ran out I made myself a somewhat cavalier promise. One day, I thought, I’d come back and complete the Burke-Gilman Trail again. But the next time, I’d keep on going. Onwards east past Snoqualmie Pass and the ragged Cascades, coasting across this land of the free through Idaho, Iowa, and Indianapolis, to where the Rail-Trail comes to an abrupt end, down the National Mall and past the Lincoln Memorial, at the United States Capitol in Washington DC. Just imagine what would be possible if that day I decided to go for a little walk.

Where to stay

Hotel Ballard (001 20678 95012; hotelballardseattle.com) has a furnished rooftop terrace from £219 per night

Covid rules 

All travellers must purchase a visa waiver (ESTA) before arrival, and show proof of being fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated travellers are not permitted to enter.

Five highlights you can walk and bike right now  1. Pittsburg to Washington DC, 335 miles

This paved and gravel route is the longest completed section of the Great American Rail-Trail

A marriage of the Great Allegheny Passage Trail and the C&O Canal Towpath, from Downtown Pittsburgh to Georgetown, this paved and gravel route is the longest completed section of the Great American Rail-Trail, helping tell the history of America through the Industrial Revolution. Where once were railroads and supply lines, now there are hiker and biker-friendly flyover bridges, tunnels, panoramic trestles and viaducts, all favourably spaced for day, overnight or through-trips. Highlights? Two standouts are the historic steel mills of the Southern Iron Valley and Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater in the Laurel Highlands, gaptrail.org; canaltrust.org/plan/co-canal-towpath.

2. Cowboy Trail, Nebraska, 195 miles

Hit the saddle on a bike or horse and follow the old Chicago & Northwestern railroad from Norfolk to Valentine. Not only is this rail-to-trail conversion one of the largest completed, but the route offers a glimpse of echoingly empty small-town America, winding through grassland prairies on a route furrowed alongside the spectacular Niobrara River. Stetsons are welcome too: Nebraska has no helmet law for cyclists, bikecowboytrail.com.

3. High Trestle Trail, Iowa, 25 miles

The High Trestle Trail Bridge over the Des Moines river

In the mind’s eye, the Hawkeye State is famous for political caucuses and little else, but it’s got more. Namely, this gorgeous Rail-Trail day trip on the former Union Pacific Railroad through five towns and four counties. It compensates for the journey to get here (Des Moines is hardly New York) hitting both emotional and natural highs on the 13-storey High Trestle Trail Bridge over the Des Moines river. Cue 41 steel-frames of Escher-like wizardry designed to fake the view through a mine shaft, a hat tip to the area’s mining history, traveliowa.com/trails/high-trestle-trail.

4. Headwaters Trail System, Montana, 11.8 miles

A pipsqueak in Rail-Trail terms, the unique appeal of this greenway in Three Forks is threefold. The trail is encircled by the Rocky Mountains, leading to the start of the Missouri River, and vestiges of railroad history are sprinkled throughout the area. The greenway follows the route of the Milwaukee Railroad, which went bankrupt in 1980, and a depot of the defunct Montana Rail Link now doubles as a history museum and visitor centre, threeforksmontana.us.

5. Spruce Railroad Trail, Washington, 4 miles

Laid out along the shores of Lake Crescent during the First World War to transport spruce for the aircraft industry, the Port Angeles Western Railroad was originally finished in 1919 – too late for its initial purpose. But it’s now been given a second life, forming part of the 90-mile Olympic Discovery Trail on the repurposed Seattle and North Coast Railroad. Swim emerald waters, seek solitude in the forests, or drop everything and continue on to the Pacific, olympicdiscoverytrail.org.