A BIG MOVEMENT WITH HEART: INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND TRAILS COALITION
The Mon River Rail-Trails are part of a much bigger trail movement. The vision of the Industrial Heartland Trails Coalition (IHTC) is to establish the Industrial Heartland as a premier destination offering a 1,500-miles-plus multi-use trail network experience.
The IHTC network will stretch across 51 counties in four states—Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and New York—from the shores of Lake Erie to the confluence of the Three Rivers in Pittsburgh and on to the Ohio River and Appalachian foothills.
Parkersburg to Pittsburgh (P2P) Corridor– The 238-mile Parkersburg to Pittsburgh Rail-Trail is already 80 percent complete; just a few short gaps exist in West Virginia to unlock a contiguous 150-miles plus stretch of rail-trail from Parkersburg to the state’s border with Pennsylvania. These gaps could be closed, and the potential of the corridor realized, within the next decade. This would link the existing North Bend Rail-Trail, Harrison North Rail-Trail, West Fork River Trail, and Mon River Rail-Trail and the cities of Parkersburg, Clarksburg, Fairmont, and Morgantown, WV.
Pittsburgh will serve as the IHTC network’s hub, with trails radiating out of the metro area and connecting to Cleveland, Akron and Ashtabula in Ohio, Morgantown and Parkersburg in West Virginia, and Erie in Pennsylvania. https://ihearttrails.org/about/
CREATING A NEW REGIONAL IDENTITY
The IHTC will spur a new wave of regional tourism, encouraging exploration of the small towns, major cities, historical sites, rivers and mountains that characterize America’s first frontier and heartbeat of the industrial revolution. The project is establishing a new collective identity for the communities along the route whose shared past and present—of innovation, steel, agriculture, manufacturing, boom, bust, reinvention and renewal—becomes their shared future.
