ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 6, 1996 TAG: 9604080090
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Perhaps it's appropriate that the Huckleberry Trail - the namesake of a slow, old railroad train - took so long to get going.
Local legend says the old train chugged so deliberately between Cambria and Blacksburg during its 54 years of service that passengers could hop off en route to pick trackside berries.
Advocates of converting the train's abandoned right of way to a modern multipurpose trail have maintained the project would be a plum of its own. They've remained on board for eight years, through all sorts of roadblocks and delays.
As ground was finally broken Thursday for the Huckleberry Trail's initial 3.2-mile construction phase, Blacksburg Mayor Roger Hedgepeth said he could sum up their efforts in two words: "Incredible fortitude."
By the time summer turns to autumn, strollers, rollers, bikers and hikers will be able to perambulate the trail from Blacksburg's library to the intersection of Hightop and Merrimac roads. By next year, the entire trail will extend to the New River Valley Mall.
Warm breezes ruffled the neckties of local officials as they ceremoniously plunged a golden shovel into the soil at the current trail terminus near Country Club Drive in Blacksburg. Already the first balmy spring days had sprouted trail users - joggers, bikers, roller bladers and a fellow sunning himself in a wheelchair - on the incomplete pathway.
For many locals, the Huckleberry Trail is a link in space and time.
Hedgepeth talked of the old days, in 1949 when as a Virginia Tech student he first rode the train from Norfolk to Blacksburg. It was a confusing journey, he recalled, as the ticket said his destination was "Christiansburg" and the station where he was told to debark was named "Cambria."
At journey's end, when Hedgepeth anxiously asked where Blacksburg was, the conductor told him, "Just bear with me. Get off."
Virginia Tech Vice President Ray Smoot also rode the memory rails, recalling the days when the Huckleberry carried Tech's cadet corps to Roanoke and the legendary annual Thanksgiving Day football battle with Virginia Military Institute, a game billed as the "Military Classic of the South."
Bill Ellenbogen, president of Friends of the Huckleberry, and the trail's leading supporter, acknowledged that the project has moved forward "at a snail's pace." Federal money to build the trail unexpectedly came with more strings than a symphony orchestra, snaring progress with a succession of bureaucratic and environmental hurdles.
Yet Ellenbogen talked instead of the trail's future when the six-mile pathway may extend to Christiansburg and beyond, to other trails that occupy old railroad lines, such as the New River State Park Trail and the Virginia Creeper Trail.
"I don't think there's any reason we can't get there," he said.
The Huckleberry Trail's span also represents a community link, Ellenbogen said. Montgomery County, Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Virginia Tech share the trail's course, and he called the Huckleberry "a shining example of what communities can do when they cooperate with each other."
When completed the trail will cost more than $1 million. About $800,000 of that comes through two federal alternative transportation grants, the rest from donations from local governments, private industry and members of the public.
Generally the trail follows the old Huckleberry right-of-way, although some detours were required because of modern-day structures such as the Tech Airport and the U.S. 460 bypass.
Drivers on that highway can see the first construction site, just east of Southgate Drive, where an underpass is being dug to pass the trail beneath a road on Tech's Dairy Science Farm.
The underpass replaced a simple gated crossing originally designed for that location at the mandate of Tech officials, who were concerned that bikers and cows wouldn't mix.
That's but one of a number of unexpected expenses and cost overruns that will make the initial Huckleberry Trail pretty basic, a graded and paved surface 8-10 feet wide with dirt shoulders. Benches, picnic spots and interpretive signs will have to wait on more money.
Having come this far, however, undaunted trail supporters have learned to be patient. As Ellenbogen said, "Good things come to those that wait."
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: 1. Huckleberry Trail logo colorby CNB2. map- The Huckleberry Trail. color STAFF