Cedar Valley Trail

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cedar Valley (Nature) 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 10 miles (16 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%.

Cities on the Trail

Flood of 2008 Damage

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 flood waters, and the limestone surface was washed away. The nature trail no longer is continuous but is open to within a few hundred feet either side of the damaged bridge.) In June 2012 the Black Hawk County, Iowa Board of Supervisors voted to award a contract with Herberger Construction Co., of Indianola, Iowa to build the new Cedar River crossing. The new 700 foot span is expected to be completed by summer of 2013.

History

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.

See also

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.