Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 22, 1993 TAG: 9308200176
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A walk along the future route of the Huckleberry Trail on a humid August afternoon is like strolling through a living book of Montgomery County's human and natural history.
There's past - rusty rails and weathered railroad ties, abandoned mines, rolling fields and wildlife.
Present - industrial buildings, housing subdivisions, highway underpasses, the Virginia Tech airport.
And future - retirement communities, satellite communication dishes, research centers.
For now, much of the trail is an abandoned railroad grade, a cinder path that's barely perceptible beneath a summer jungle of vegetation.
However, there's a group of dreamers hereabouts who see farther down the line.
They envision the Huckleberry Trail as an open 6-mile foot-and-bike path filled with people strolling or rolling between Blacksburg and the New River Valley Mall.
For the early half of this century, the trail was a prosperous railroad line that carried passengers and coal between Blacksburg and Christiansburg.
But times changed and the train faded away like smoke.
That's where things stood as recently as four years ago, when the idea of building a new trail on the old route began to gather steam.
Now, backers of the Huckleberry Trail have assembled an ambitious design and a proposal for a state grant that, if successful, will soon make the trail a reality.
Any number of physical, political or financial hurdles might have stalled or killed the project. Building a trail is like joining a diverse set of links, not all of which easily fit together.
"When this first hit the scene, it was a sky-blue thing," said Montgomery County Supervisor Jim Moore, among a host of public officials and private citizens to climb aboard the trail.
"We knew we had a good project," said Bill Ellenbogen, a Blacksburg restaurateur who has been the Huckleberry Trail's most visible and vocal supporter since the idea was hatched. "We have right on our side."
"They took off and ran with it," Joe Powers, the county's planning director, said of trail advocates. "They're people who don't see obstacles, who are willing to be creative."
Two affiliated pro-trail organizations - PATH (People Advocating the Huckleberry) and Friends of the Huckleberry - are made up of people motivated by a combination of public spirit and personal interest.
"Many of us have an interest in seeing it finished so we can use it," said Tim Stowe of Anderson & Associates, an engineering firm involved in designing and building the trail.
Also, Stowe said he and others want to see the trail succeed because it has promoted cooperation among the three governments involved - Montgomery County, the towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg - and Virginia Tech.
"Lord knows there's a gulf between the way they did things," said Ellenbogen.
"They needed a physical link," he said, noting that the trail crosses land that was the object of a bitter annexation dispute in the 1970s. "This may be a way to bury the hatchet."
All have pitched in behind the Huckleberry Trail by providing endorsements, funding, use of land, maintenance agreements or technical support.
In addition, the trail's grass-roots effort has attracted financial support from several large and small businesses, the largest being Corning Inc., which donated $35,000 to the trail.
Mark Cates, president of PATH and a Corning technical manager, said the company recognized that a completed Huckleberry Trail would enhance the area's quality of life and be an attractive incentive for new industries.
"I don't know that I've ever heard any opposition to it," Stowe said of the trail.
Powers said the Huckleberry Trail has progressed rapidly because the effort has been spearheaded by the private sector.
"Since the beginning, our assumption was that we would get no governmental funding. If we did get that kind of support, that's great, but we were going to move ahead regardless," said Cates.
Trail supporters have been piecing the trail together for several years - clearing brush here, building a footbridge there. A mile-long stretch of the old rail route in Blacksburg has been paved and used for walking and biking for years.
The opportunity to finish the trail sooner than anyone imagined rests with the grant application recently submitted to the state Department of Transportation.
Responding to a national groundswell, Congress has appropriated millions of dollars to build recreational trails. Administration of these funds is up to the state; Virginia's share for the coming year is $14 million.
The Huckleberry Trail has requested about $400,000, which it says would complete the trail.
Supporters are optimistic the state will approve the request, even though 218 other Virginia projects also have submitted grant applications totaling about $69 million.
The state says a decision on allocation of the money will be made later this year. If the Huckleberry Trail gets the full amount it requested, Ellenbogen said, it could be finished and opened next year.
Plans call for a 12-foot-wide trail - hard-surfaced in the middle with unpaved shoulders - that will run mostly on the old railroad right-of-way.
Changes in the landscape will force some detours. The U.S. 460 bypass was built atop the old railroad bed and the Tech airport runway is nearby, so the path will be altered to cross agricultural land owned by the college.
Also, the major crossing of Slate Branch, where a trestle used to bridge the streambed, will need a lengthy pedestrian bridge over the stream and active rail line.
The bridge can't be built unless Norfolk Southern Corp. agrees, and NS tends to be wary about allowing such crossings.
Elsewhere, the trail passes through field, forest and wetlands. "You can get really rural really quick," Powers said.
It will give users the opportunity to get from downtown Blacksburg to the New River Valley Mall without a car, passing near Tech's Corporate Research Center, the Warm Hearth Village retirement community, Montgomery Regional Hospital and the Corning plant.
Adjacent land has been donated for parks, and displays are planned for natural areas and historic locations such as the old Merrimac mines.
Coal was the reason the Virginia Anthracite Coal and Railway Co. built the trunk line between Christiansburg and Blacksburg early this century.
The train carried passengers to Blacksburg and was the town's major transportation link to the outside world until the 1920s, when automobiles began to take over.
Those passengers, including characteristically irreverent college students headed to and from Virginia Tech, gave the Huckleberry its name.
Early on, when the locomotives were slow and temperamental, the train would stall on upgrades. Impatient passengers would hop off the train and pick huckleberries, which were abundant in season along the way.
The slow train and the passengers' pastime became legendary - and the object of many student jokes.
By 1958, the train carried only two passengers daily, and the service was ended. The line was abandoned in 1967 and forgotten until the idea of resurrecting the Huckleberry as a trail arose.
"It's a very benevolent project in a number of ways," said Ellenbogen. "We're getting closer to the finish line."
by CNB