The trail will eventually connect Hendersonville and Brevard.
Photo Above: The Ecusta Trail’s first section connects Hendersonville with Horse Shoe, North Carolina. Courtesy of Derek DiLuzio.
After two decades of sitting idle, the Ecusta Trail rail line linking two North Carolina mountain towns — Hendersonville and Brevard — is being transformed into a rail trail.
“It is an active, lively trail. There are people everywhere,” says Robert Gunn, a co-owner of the Ecusta Market & Café at Hendersonville.
Constructed in the 1890s, the train shuttled passengers and freight until 2002. And it serviced a Brevard paper mill called “Ecusta,” taking its name from a Cherokee word meaning “rippling waters.”
The first six miles of the trail opened in July, with Hendersonville’s welcome center anchoring as a trailhead.
“The reason we’re here is the trail,” says Gunn. “If you’re sitting at a table on our patio, you can basically high-five bikers as they bike by.”
For now, the paved route rolls to Horse Shoe, a community overlooking a horseshoe-shaped bend in the French Broad River. The largely level journey finds forests of white pine plus a bamboo grove and sights of a slow-flowing mountain stream.
You can stop at a gem mine along the way and discover breweries and coffee shops. Toward the western end, catch sight of Mount Pisgah.
“It’s a safe and easy way to explore. And you see the community from a different viewpoint,” says Summer Stipe, who rents bikes at Venture Ecusta in Hendersonville.
The trail is expected to grow to 19-plus miles to reach Brevard by the end of the decade. Then, says Gunn, “you’ve got a destination on either side. It’s going to be essentially downtown to downtown.”
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2026 issue.
