hill country observerThe independent newspaper of eastern New York, southwestern Vermont and the Berkshires

 

News & Issues August 2022

 

States upgrade trail along Vermont-N.Y. line

Scenic route draws more users, but legal obstacles leave overgrown gaps

 

The Vermont portions of the D&H Rail Trail, which extends nearly 22 miles along the New York state line, has been resurfaced with crushed stone, making for a smoother ride. This view is in Rupert, Vt. Don Lehman photo

 

The Vermont portions of the D&H Rail Trail, which extends nearly 22 miles along the New York state line, has been resurfaced with crushed stone, making for a smoother ride. This view is in Rupert, Vt. Don Lehman photo

 

By DON LEHMAN
Contributing writer

RUPERT, Vt.


As recently as the summer of 2018, people walking or biking the D&H Rail Trail in western Vermont were met with some overgrown sections where there was barely a narrow path through the brush.


“There were some sections where there was like a tire tread width,” recalled Jon Kaplan, manager of Vermont Agency of Transportation’s Bike and Pedestrian Program.


In Rupert, a beaver pond flooded part of the trail, requiring a short detour on local roads.
Four years later, the Vermont sections of the nearly 22 miles of former railroad from West Rupert to Castleton have been resurfaced with crushed stone, providing a smooth surface for walking or biking. The trail has been widened, and infringing brush is no longer an issue.


In Vermont and New York, nearly $1.5 million has been invested in the former rail corridor over the past few years, transforming it from a lightly maintained path to a professionally built rail trail.
Signs and parking areas have been added — there’s even Wi-Fi at the parking area in West Pallet — and use of the route has risen significantly as local trail aficionados, and some from outside the area, have taken notice.


As a result, the trail is increasingly seen as a benefit to the rural western Vermont towns through which it passes.


Jessica Van Oort, a member of the Pawlet Select Board, called the trail “a major recreational asset” for the village of West Pawlet.


“It has seen increased use since the beginning of the pandemic, as outdoor recreation became even more crucial to people’s well-being,” Van Oort said.


But there are a couple of stretches of the old railroad route on the New York side of the state line that remain overgrown and impassable, and the dream of transforming them into a through trail from Castleton to Salem, N.Y., is caught in a legal limbo.

 

Historic rural route
It has been a decades-long journey to get to this point.
The trail rests upon the former rail bed that was once the northern portion of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad’s Washington Branch, which operated for nearly 160 years, beginning in 1823. Around the turn of the 20th century, the daily “slate picker” train brought materials and people between Castleton, Vt., and Eagle Bridge, N.Y., where it connected to a line to Troy and Albany.
Although passenger trains along the line died off in the Depression years, the railroad continued as a freight route until 1980. But changes in the slate industry that was a major source of online freight traffic gradually made the line less viable.


After the last train ran on the portion north of Salem, N.Y., the state of Vermont took ownership of the sections of railbed there. But New York laws, which resulted in landowners making claims to the right-of-way across their properties, hindered progress to the west.


By the late 1980s, the route through Vermont was officially designated as a recreational trail. In the early years, it was little more than a defunct railroad with its rails and ties pulled up. The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation began the process of converting it into a maintained trail, and the state Agency of Transportation has taken the lead since 2019.
Now the D&H trail and three other rail trails around Vermont, including the newly completed 93-mile Lamoille Valley Rail Trail in the northern part of the state, are overseen by the Agency of Transportation, which has resulted in more resources for maintaining and upgrading the trails.
“It’s a trail that is accessible to everybody,” said Jackie Cassino, the transportation agency’s rail trail manager. “If you don’t have a bike, you can walk it.”

 

The trail abruptly ends in a wall of brush when it reaches the New York border south of Poultney, Vt. A court ruling in New York and opposition from some neighboring landowners has left a gap of about four miles from here to Middle Granville, N.Y. Don Lehman photo

 

The trail abruptly ends in a wall of brush when it reaches the New York border south of Poultney, Vt. A court ruling in New York and opposition from some neighboring landowners has left a gap of about four miles from here to Middle Granville, N.Y. Don Lehman photo

 

Gaps in New York
Trail development along the roughly eight miles of the former rail line in Washington County, N.Y., has not gone as smoothly. Some portions, such as the route through the village of Granville, are cleared and maintained, but a couple of long sections are not.


When people traveling north on the trail reach the former Middle Granville train depot near Butler Road in Granville, the trail ends in a wall of brush. One can hop back on after a detour on LaFountain Lane and go for about a half-mile before overgrowth makes the route impassable once again.


It’s not until about four miles to the north that the route is cleared as a trail to take walkers and bicyclists about 10 more miles through Poultney to the end of the line in Castleton.


More than 30 years after Vermont sections of the former rail line began the transformation to a multi-use trail, two sections in New York continue to be off limits because of landowner conflict, a situation that hinders the trail’s potential to attract users.


Leaders in the town of Granville, N.Y., have been working on sections of the rail trail in their town, but obstacles to connection remain in the form of two landowners who won’t cooperate.
“We are sort of in limbo,” said Granville Town Supervisor Matt Hicks. “It’s very disappointing.”
A state court ruling from the 1990s allowed adjacent landowners in New York to claim that the right of way reverted to their ownership after the route ceased to be used as a railroad.

 

Seeking ways to connect
While officials in New York struggle to find a way to bring disconnected sections together, the four-plus miles of trail in New York that are open to the public have seen significant improvements over the past two years.


The town of Granville received $250,000 in state grant funding to resurface the trail and clear away trailside brush — and try to join the sections that have been blocked by individual landowners.


Some of the funding was used for extensive improvements between the New York state line at West Pawlet, Vt., and Middle Granville, building it standards set by the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. The result is a new stone surface, repairs of washed-out areas and some trimming of trees and brush.


With the effort to connect sections in New York seemingly at a standstill, trail proponents have looked for ways to connect Middle Granville and Poultney by detouring onto roads. Rerouting a stretch to nearby Butler Road to bypass the blocked sections remains a possibility, though proponents want to avoid doing so if possible.


Progress in New York has been slowed by the Covid-19 pandemic — and by the death of a Granville municipal official who had been a point person for efforts to re-connect the trail.
Hicks said it would not take a lot of work to clear the trail for use if the landowners in Middle Granville decide to cooperate.


“It’s all been mapped and designed,” Hicks said. “We’re ready to go.”
The New York parks agency, with which the town of Granville has been working on the effort to connect the trail sections, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the matter.
While some landowners along new trails have expressed concerns about potential safety issues with people on the trail, Cassino said the experience in Vermont has been the opposite. Trail uses, she said, serve as extra eyes and ears to help make sure any issues are reported.

 

A community resource
Vermont has spent $1.2 million on its portion of the D&H Rail Trail, with 80 percent of that coming from federal funding. And within the Green Mountain State, there are plans to do more.
“The goal is to make the trail consistent from end to end,” Kaplan said.


Cassino said a complete assessment of the length of the trail is planned within the next three years to identify assets that are in place and where additional improvements can be made.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation staff has been working with the towns along the trail — Rupert, Pawlet, Poultney and Castleton — to add resources such as parking spots, bathrooms and signs.


“As use of the trail increases, there is becoming a parking deficit in some areas,” Cassino said.
There is also a desire to create a rail trail “council” in Vermont, with representatives of the communities through which it passes, to work with Vermont state staff to identify and address needs on the trail.


And there is a push to work to promote attractions and events along the trail.
The towns of Pawlet and Rupert recently worked together to obtain a Vermont Outdoor Recreation Communities grant to make improvements to the trail parking lots and to the way-finding signs in the two communities, Van Oort explained.


“The village of West Pawlet is currently involved in a planning process to work on visions and goals for the village center, and the rail trail and the possibilities it provides for economic development to serve both residents and visitors is a major part of this plan,” she said.
Andrea Lenhardt, the Rupert town clerk, said increased use of the trail has been evident in her community, though there have been mixed reactions to it among some townspeople. In Rupert, the trail passes through the backyards of a number of homes.


In Poultney, where the local economy was hurt badly by the closing of Green Mountain College in 2019, there has been an effort to create a more distinct trailhead, and a parking area on Bentley Avenue was expanded and improved.


Vermont transportation officials have also worked to connect the rail trail with a network overseen by Slate Valley Trails, a volunteer group that has built dozens of mountain biking and hiking trails in the Poultney and Castleton areas.


Sarah Kelley, the town of Poultney’s economic development coordinator, said town officials are working with the state and Slate Valley Trails to plan the trail’s future, including seeking state grant funding for improvements. The rail trail has great potential for increasing tourism, particularly as electric bicycles become more popular and allow more people to take up bicycling, she said.


“The towns along the trail are starting to see the trail as an asset,” Kelley said.
Snowmobile clubs have helped with maintenance of sections of the rail trail where snowmobiles are allowed.


The Vermont Agency of Transportation is also planning a comprehensive website detailing all that the D&H Rail Trail has to offer. For now, the only state web presence for the trail is a bare-bones site that was created some years ago by Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.


“We’re really trying to put together a cohesive corridor for users,” Cassino said. “We know there is a lot more we can do.”

 

Visit https://vtstateparks.com/assets/pdf/dhrailtrail.pdf for a map and an informational brochure about the D&H Rail Trail.