Our history
Built on the bones of the railroads
Every trail RTC maintains was once a working railroad. The story of these trails is the story of how a region reinvented its industrial past as public space.
The corridors
Coal, coke, and steel came first
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, southwestern Pennsylvania was one of the industrial engines of the world. Coal came out of the ground, was baked into coke in thousands of beehive ovens, and fed the steel mills of the Monongahela Valley. Moving all of it required railroads — and the region was webbed with them.
Those same railroads are the trails of today. The Yough River Trail follows a line out of the Connellsville coke region. The Westmoreland Yough Trail rides the former Pittsburgh & Lake Erie bed. The Steel Valley Trail passes the site of the Homestead Works and the Battle of Homestead. The Coal & Coke Trail runs past authentic coke ovens along Jacob’s Creek. The heritage isn’t a museum exhibit beside the trail — it is the trail.
The story, in order
From abandoned line to public trail
1880s–1910s
Rails through the coke region
Railroads laced southwestern Pennsylvania to haul coal, coke, and steel. The Connellsville coke district was among the most productive in the world, and lines like the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie threaded every river valley.
Mid-1900s
The lines go quiet
As the coal and steel economy declined, the railroads pulled up service. What they left behind were long, flat, gently graded corridors following the Youghiogheny, the Monongahela, and Jacob's Creek.
1980s
A new idea for old corridors
The national rails-to-trails movement took hold, reimagining abandoned rail beds as public, non-motorized trails. Southwestern Pennsylvania, with its dense web of disused lines, was fertile ground.
1991
The Regional Trail Corporation is founded
RTC forms as a nonprofit to acquire southwestern Pennsylvania's abandoned rail corridors and develop them into public trails — and to maintain them for the long haul.
1990s–2000s
Chapters and miles
Volunteer chapters organize town by town — Yough River, Westmoreland Yough, Steel Valley, and more — opening section after section and building the trailheads, shelters, and bridges that make a corridor a trail.
2013
The Great Allegheny Passage is completed
The 150-mile GAP between Pittsburgh and Cumberland, Maryland is finished. At Cumberland it meets the C&O Canal Towpath, creating a continuous, car-free route of more than 330 miles to Washington, D.C.
Today
Still growing
RTC and its nine chapters maintain more than 200 miles of trail. New mileage is still being added — the Westmoreland Heritage Trail is being extended toward a continuous 22-mile route and a future connection to the GAP.
The next chapter is still being written
New miles, new bridges, and new connections are added every year — all of it by volunteers and the people who support them.
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.