The Rock Island line: How it went from cross-state railroad to (potential) cross-state trail
A recent issue of the Missouri Parks Association Heritage newsletter carries a lengthy and fascinating article by B. H. Rucker detailing the history of the work to turn the Rock Island railroad line into a statewide trail, linking with the Katy Trail to create a 450+ mile cross-state trail loop.
The story begins with the travails of the Rock Island railroad from its beginnings in 1852 through numerous expansions, acquisitions, and no fewer than three receiverships--leading to an opportunity to acquire the corridor for a cross-state trail in the mid 1980s:
This tangle of railroad business is of interest, of course, because of the 1983 Rails-to-Trails Act, which amended the 1968 National Trails System Act to permit the preservation of railroad corridors by long-term, interim use as hiking and biking trails. Missouri’s first project was the Katy Trail, after the Interstate Commerce Commission granted a certificate of interim trail use from St. Charles to Sedalia in 1987, and later from Sedalia to Clinton.
State park planners and trail enthusiasts never lost sight of their long-range goal: a hiking and biking trail all the way across Missouri. As it happened, the Southern Pacific Railroad acquired the Rock Island Line in Missouri during the bankruptcy proceedings, then announced its intent to abandon it. In 1993 DNR filed a formal request with the ICC to secure a 197-mile segment from Owensville
in Gasconade County to Kansas City, in large part to make possible a link with the Katy Trail at Windsor, thus completing a trail across the state. The Missouri Rail Trail Foundation pledged funds set aside for this acquisition through the foresight of Ted Jones, who had died in 1990.
But Union Pacific, which had donated the segment of the MKT from Sedalia through Windsor to Clinton that made the link with the Rock Island possible, petitioned the ICC for the twenty-six-mile right-of-way from Kansas City to Pleasant Hill for coal trains, and the ICC approved. Though a local group was still trying to raise funds to restart rail service on the part of the line between Pleasant Hill and Owensville, DNR in 1994 signed a contingent contract with the Southern Pacific for that stretch of line.
Read the rest of this fascinating article in the Missouri Parks Association Heritage newsletter.
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