Greene River Trail — Quietpanic

Oct 16

Oct 16 Greene River Trail

While I’m in Pennsylvania for the next two months, I thought I’d try as many walking trails as I could as I wind through the Keystone state. Trail number eleven is a piece of Pennsylvania’s amazing Rails to Trails system known as The Greene River Trail.

The trail is absolutely gorgeous, especially this time of the year. The trees are changing and the leaves strewn about the trail add to the ambiance. The trail uses the railbed of the defunct Pennsylvania, Monongahela & Southern Railroad (part of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the largest railroad company in the world in the 1880’s. It’s budget was second only to the US government at that time). When the coal mines shut down in the 1960’s the railroad soon followed.

The “beginning” of the trail is more traveled and in better shape

Although the mileage signs, spaced every quarter of a mile along the trail, start at the north end of the trail at a yacht club, apparently, there was a dispute with the club concerning parking, so the parking lot is actually just to the northwest of Rice’s Landing approximately 2 1/2 miles down the trail.

Rice’s Landing itself has an interesting claim to fame. George Washington and his men were said to have camped here on their way to Fort Duquesne during the French Indian war in 1755. Thirty years later, John Rice purchased the land and started a settlement that exists to this day (pop 426).

The trail downriver from Rice’s Landing is less traveled

I really enjoyed walking the trail. I met several other people also walking the trail and one person on a bike, however, unlike the GAP (Great Allegheny Passage) segment that I walked for trail ten, this trail is too short to be as popular with cyclists.

Meandering along the western shore of the Monongahela River, which still has significant barge traffic, the trail was one of the more enjoyable experiences I’ve had walking in Pennsylvania.