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The Mendota Trail has more than a dozen trestles over its 12.5-mile length.
Photo Above Courtesy of Joe Tennis.
More than 20 years in the making, the 12.5-mile-long Mendota Trail opens this August in Washington County, Virginia—about 12 miles from the nationally famous Virginia Creeper Trail linking Abingdon, Virginia, to Ashe County, North Carolina. The Mendota Trail occupies the former path of the Southern Railroad, which stopped running trains in 1972 between Bristol and Mendota, Virginia.
Briefly, this path was used for scenic excursion trains. A few years later, disagreements ensued over who actually owned the land where this railroad was built – until it was determined that the rail line was connected as a long, skinny piece of property.
Trail construction began by 2017, delighting rail-to-trail fans anxious to see this country cousin of The Virginia Creeper Trail come into its own with a dozen trestles, rock cuts and craggy cliffs.
“The woods are worthy of appreciation,” says Dry Jim Lapis, the president of the non-profit Mendota Trail Conservancy.
The crushed-gravel path threads through farmland and ultimately crosses the scenic North Fork of the Holston River on a grand, 300-foot-long trestle that includes a lookout lane next to a swinging bridge. In the last mile to the west, the trail reaches Mendota—a once-incorporated town but now a sleepy village at the foot of densely forested Clinch Mountain.
In between, the trail cuts through the mystical Wolf Run Gorge for a couple of miles. For more info: mendotatrail.org
The story above first appeared in our July / August 2023 issue.
