ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605210015
SECTION: DISCOVER PAGE: 58 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Come autumn, there will be a way to travel back through the human and natural history of Montgomery County - and get some exercise in the process.
That's when the Huckleberry Trail's initial phase should be completed. Bikers, hikers, joggers and in-line skaters will be able to cruise about four miles from the Blacksburg library south to the intersection of Merrimac and Hightop roads.
Later, perhaps by year's end, the entire six miles of 10-foot-wide paved trail will be opened to the New River Valley Mall.
It's been a long time in the works, eight years since the idea was hatched, three since the grant money needed to build the project was awarded. A number of unanticipated hurdles delayed progress, but ground was broken in April.
The Huckleberry Trail, a rails-to-trails conversion, will be the first local pathway exclusively dedicated to nonmotorized use. Think of it as a link between space and time.
The trail passes through Montgomery County and the towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg. Governments of all three localities supported the project and worked together to make it a reality. Industries such as Columbia Montgomery Regional Hospital and Corning, Inc., contributed resources. Virginia Tech let the trail traverse its property, and the path borders the Warm Hearth Village retirement community.
The trail generally follows the course of the old Huckleberry, a train that ran along a spur line connecting stations at Cambria and Blacksburg.
Carrying freight and passengers, the Huckleberry chugged into local legend during the 50 years it operated. The story goes that the underpowered train ran so slowly that passengers could hop off to pick berries, hence the name.
The train stopped running in the late 1950s and the tracks were yanked up about a decade later. Norfolk and Western abandoned the right of way to the control of local governments.
The trail heads north from the west side of the New River Valley Mall, passes through through a deep cut, crosses the active Norfolk Southern tracks, skirts the eastern flank of Price Mountain, parallels and passes beneath the U.S. 460 bypass and hooks up with the present terminus of the route near Margaret Beeks Elementary School.
Much of the pathway heads through back country that few modern-day folks have seen.
One of the places that's bound to be better known because of the trail will be a narrow stream valley just south of the Merrimac-Hightop road intersection. These days the area is overgrown and desolate, but it used to be the industrial heart of the county.
In 1904, the area's first large-scale coal mine began operation there. Smaller mines had been prospected in the area for years, and legend says Price Mountain coal fueled the boilers of the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia during its epic battle with the USS Monitor in 1862.
(The Virginia was actually a Union ship named the Merrimac that the Rebels had sunk, raised, renamed and fitted with an iron shell. Because the investors who opened the big mine were from Pennsylvania, the area got the Yankee name, and it remains to this day.)
For more than 30 years, Merrimac was the site of a self-sufficient company town with offices, a hotel, a commissary and company houses arranged around the tipple where the coal was sorted and dumped into railroad hoppers.
The mines attracted many people to the area, including ex-farmers and some Eastern European immigrants, and their descendants live here still.
Hard times and a strike closed the big mine in the mid-1930s. The coal town was gradually disassembled until few traces remain today.
Still, the coal mine was the reason the railroad tracks were laid and, years later, the reason there'll be a Huckleberry Trail.
Plans are to build a number of trailside signs through Merrimac and elsewhere that tell the story of how things used to be.
The past was one of the reasons it took so long to build the new trail. Organizers got caught in the web of federal regulations that accompanied the grant money.
Pottery shards from Indian sites and little-known endangered species such as the Ellett Valley pseudotremia (a bug) and the loggerhead shrike (a bird) had to be environmentally assessed. Old structures such as bridge abutments had to be historically inventoried. The design had to be accessible to the disabled.
That bureaucratic square dance cost the project time and money, frustrating the trail's proponents and delaying the start of construction. It didn't help that the grant money was from a first-time program that routed federally generated gasoline tax money through the state government, a double dose of sticky red tape.
The good news was that most of the path already was in public ownership, having been ceded when the line was abandoned years ago. Most negotiations involving land concerned a stretch of the trail that passes through Virginia Tech property.
The original rail line crossed the edge of the runway at the Virginia Tech airport, so the pathway was relocated. The new trail passes beneath U.S. 460 through an underpass just south of South Gate Drive.
Ground finally was broken in April and estimates are that the trail will be ready for use by summer's end.
The unexpected costs and delays forced planners to split trail construction into two phases, with the northern 3.2-mile stretch taking first priority.
In all, the Huckleberry Trail will probably cost in excess of $1 million, money that has been generated primarily from government grants, along with donations from industries and individuals.
Once opened, the trail will begin to spin off more projects, such as the development of a park on donated land near the Merrimac-Hightop road crossing. Planners also envision extending the trail behind the new Wal-Mart to the new Christiansburg recreation center on North Franklin Street, and beyond to downtown Christiansburg.
There's even talk of someday linking the trail with other recreational pathways such as the New River Trail.
That may sound farfetched. But so did the idea of a Huckleberry Trail eight years ago.
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. The bike path draws joggers,by CNBdog-walkers and all manner of fresh-air seekers as well as cyclists.
Graphic: Map. color.