About
An all-volunteer force for public trails
The Regional Trail Corporation has spent more than three decades turning abandoned railroad lines into the trails southwestern Pennsylvania rides, walks, and runs on today.
Our mission
Converting railroad corridors into public greenways
The Regional Trail Corporation (RTC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1991 and based in West Newton, Pennsylvania. Its mission is to acquire abandoned railroad corridors across southwestern Pennsylvania and develop them into public, non-motorized recreational trails — and then to maintain those trails for the long term.
RTC is an all-volunteer organization. It owns and manages trail corridors directly, holds the leases and easements that keep them public, and coordinates 9 local chapters that carry out maintenance, fundraising, and community events. Together they care for more than 200 miles of rail-trail across 4 counties: Allegheny County, Fayette County, Indiana County, and Westmoreland County.
A large share of that mileage belongs to the Great Allegheny Passage — the 150-mile rail-trail between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cumberland, Maryland. RTC chapters maintain much of the Passage’s Pennsylvania mileage, from the Mon Valley near Pittsburgh out to Ohiopyle.
- 200+
- miles of trail
- 10,000+
- volunteer hours a year
- 9
- local chapters
- 35
- years of stewardship
across four trail systems
one of PA's largest all-volunteer trail programs
rooted in their own communities
building trails since 1991
Why “TrailKeepers”
The people are the program
RTC’s real infrastructure isn’t asphalt or limestone — it’s people. The organization runs almost entirely on volunteer labor, and the trails exist because thousands of hours are given to them every year.
TrailKeepers is the name for that community: the volunteers who maintain the corridors, the members who fund supplies and equipment, and the supporters who simply show up, ride, and spread the word. It’s how you join, and it’s how the trails stay open.
What we believe
The principles behind the work
Trails should be free and public
Every mile RTC maintains is open to the public at no charge. We protect the corridors and leases that keep them that way for the next generation.
Local people care for local trails
Nine community chapters do the on-the-ground work. The people who maintain a trail are the people who live beside it and use it every week.
Volunteers can build big things
An all-volunteer organization helped complete a 150-mile national-class trail. We believe ordinary people, organized well, are the most durable infrastructure a trail has.
Want the mechanics of how chapters, maintenance, and funding fit together? See how we work.
Help keep the trails there when you need them.
Whether you swing a loppers on a Saturday or chip in a few dollars, every TrailKeeper makes the next mile possible.