Cedar Valley Trail is a rail trail running 52 miles (84 km) from Hiawatha, Iowa to Waterloo, Iowa.
It runs through the counties of Linn, Benton, and Black Hawk. The southern 3 miles (4.8 km) as well as the northern 15 miles (24 km) of the trail are paved with asphalt, with the remainder being lined with crushed limestone.
Because locomotives required the route to be flat, at no point in the trail does the grade exceed 2%.
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A portion of the Cedar Valley Trail was damaged in the Iowa Flood of 2008. The Cedar River bridge approximately seven miles west of Brandon was covered by floodwaters, and the limestone surface was washed away. There are no plans for bridge replacement. The nature trail no longer is continuous. [1])
Prior to 1977, the path of the trail was used as a railroad corridor by Illinois Central Railroad. That year, the corridor was abandoned and the tracks were removed. The Iowa state legislature and nonprofit organizations such as the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund raised the funds necessary to purchase the site by 1983. The following year, the trail opened to public traffic.