Cedar Lake Trail

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A look at the Cedar Lake Trail heading into downtown Minneapolis, from early spring of 2006.

Cedar Lake Trail west of downtown

The Cedar Lake Trail is America's first bike freeway. It is a rail trail located on the west side of Minneapolis, Minnesota and was inaugurated on February 17, 1995.

The trail features two separate one-way lanes for bike traffic and one two-way lane for pedestrian traffic. The paved trail runs from downtown Minneapolis to connect with the city's most popular bike trails in the west suburbs. The trail follows the BNSF Railway line west out of downtown Minneapolis.

The trail connects with other Minneapolis trails as follows:

A bridge over the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks connects to Bryn Mawr park and a trail along Bassett Creek
A short spur leads to Parade Stadium and provides a connection to Kenwood Parkway
A longer spur, the Kenilworth Trail, follows the old Chicago and Northwestern Railroad branch along the east side of Cedar Lake. This provides a connection to the Midtown Greenway Trail, the Southwest LRT Trail, and the trails around Lake Calhoun.
Another spur follows the west shore of Cedar Lake.
On the west end of the trail at Highway 100, the trail connects with the Hutchinson Spur Trail, which cuts across St. Louis Park and ends up in Hopkins.

The trail is located in areas that were formerly railroad yards for the Great Northern Railway and the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway. When Burlington Northern (the successor to Great Northern) consolidated its facilities elsewhere, and the Chicago and Northwestern (the successor to Minneapolis and St. Louis) dismantled the MSTL facilities, the land became available for use as parkland.