The Industrial Heartland Trails Coalition's 1,500-Mile Vision Is Rewriting What Bikepacking in America Can Be
There is a particular kind of ambition that defines the best outdoor infrastructure projects in this country — the kind that refuses to accept that America's trail network has already reached its ceiling. The Industrial Heartland Trails Coalition (IHTC) is that ambition made physical. The vision of the IHTC is to establish the Industrial Heartland as a premier destination offering a 1,500-miles-plus multiuse trail network experience — threading together four states, dozens of rail corridors, river valleys, post-industrial cities, and stretches of genuine backcountry wilderness into one of the most compelling new multiuse adventure networks in North America.
For the growing legion of bikepackers who have already worn out every familiar route in the East — who have rolled the Erie Canalway, pressed south on the C&O Canal towpath, and hammered up the Great Allegheny Passage — the IHTC network represents something genuinely new. It is the largest trail-building undertaking in this corner of the country, and when complete, it will transform a region long defined by its rusting smokestacks and declining steel towns into one of the continent's premier destinations for self-supported cycling adventure.
What the IHTC Actually Is, and Where It Goes
The IHTC is not a single trail. It is a coordinated network — an interconnected system of existing and planned rail-trails, river towpaths, paved greenways, and natural surface paths. 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. That geography alone tells you something important: this is not a flat, featureless cruise across the Midwest. This is ridgeline country, river country, coal-seam country. The terrain is varied, the history is heavy, and the riding is anything but boring.
The IHTC's 1,500-mile-plus trail network will span 51 counties in Western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and the southwestern corner of New York. Pittsburgh sits at the center of the web, functioning as the network's main hub — a city with world-class food and a rapidly expanding cycling culture, positioned to receive riders from every corridor of the network. From there, spokes radiate outward: northwest toward Lake Erie, northeast into New York State, west toward Cleveland and Akron, and south and west into the Appalachian hollows of West Virginia.
The Major Corridors
The IHTC organizes its network around a series of defining corridors, each with its own character and, in many places, its own partially complete trail infrastructure already on the ground. The major corridors include the Parkersburg to Pittsburgh Corridor, which links trails including the North Bend Rail Trail and Mon River Rail Trail through West Virginia and into Pennsylvania, and the Ashtabula to Pittsburgh Corridor, which chains together the Western Reserve Greenway and Little Beaver Creek Trail through Ohio into the Pittsburgh metro.
Then there is the Cleveland to Pittsburgh Corridor — arguably the signature achievement of the IHTC's planning work and one of the most tantalizing pieces of the entire network for bikepackers. The Cleveland to Pittsburgh (C2P) corridor is the first and only comprehensively studied route within the IHTC, anchored by the two largest metro areas in the network's footprint: Cleveland, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — with communities including Akron, Massillon, New Philadelphia, Steubenville, Weirton, and Burgettstown along the way.
The network's reach doesn't stop at those anchor cities. The IHTC envisions a 1,500-mile network of trails stretching from the shores of Lake Erie to the confluence of Pittsburgh's Three Rivers and on to the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia. That range — from a Great Lake to Appalachian hardwood forests — means the IHTC corridor system touches an astonishing diversity of American landscape within a relatively compact geographic footprint.
The Parkersburg-to-Pittsburgh Route: The Backbone of a New Bikepacking Classic
If any single corridor within the IHTC has the potential to become a standalone bikepacking destination — the kind of route people plan months in advance, ship their bikes to the start, and talk about for years after — it is the Parkersburg to Pittsburgh route, known informally as the P2P. The 238-mile Parkersburg to Pittsburgh rail-trail is already nearly 80 percent complete, with just a few short gaps remaining in West Virginia that, if closed, would unlock a contiguous 150-miles-plus stretch from Parkersburg to the state's border with Pennsylvania.
The P2P begins in Parkersburg, a small Ohio River city on West Virginia's western edge, and heads east along the North Bend Rail Trail — one of the most underrated long-distance rail trails in the entire country. The P2P corridor heads east out of the Ohio River port city of Parkersburg, along the North Bend Rail Trail, through small, rural communities like Cairo, West Union, and Salem. These are not tourist towns with upscale outfitters. They are working communities where a biker pulling into a diner on a loaded rig is still something worth talking about — and where the food is good, the lodging is cheap, and the locals are more than happy to tell you about what the corridor looked like when those old rail grades still carried coal.
The P2P's character shifts as it moves east into Pennsylvania, following the river systems and old industrial infrastructure that once powered an entire national economy. The P2P is part of an even larger, 1,500-miles-plus planned trail network spanning 51 counties across West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, supported by the Industrial Heartland Trails Coalition. For bikepackers, that context matters. The P2P is not a stand-alone experience — it is an entry point into a far larger system, one where a rider who completes the 238-mile corridor still has hundreds of additional miles available from Pittsburgh in multiple directions.
How Much Is Already Rideable — and What Still Needs to Be Built
One of the most important things to understand about the IHTC is that it is not a future project. Large sections of this network exist right now and are rideable. Of the envisioned 1,500-mile network, roughly 47 percent of the mileage was already complete, having been built by local and regional trail organizations over the past several decades — and the coalition itself consists of more than 100 organizations and stakeholders collaborating to complete and connect the system.
Those numbers reflect something important about how the IHTC works. This is not a top-down government initiative waiting on federal appropriations. It is a coalition model — a web of more than a hundred local trail organizations, environmental nonprofits, economic development authorities, and state agencies, all coordinating under the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's TrailNation framework to move the needle on gaps, funding, and easements simultaneously. Since 2013, the Industrial Heartland Trails Coalition has worked to make the 1,500-miles-plus vision a reality. That decade-plus of groundwork has produced real results on the ground.
The math on the gap closures is striking. The completion of just four gaps totaling only 4.1 miles in the vicinity of Akron and Cleveland would result in 120.5 miles of continuous trail — and completing a single 3-mile segment at Oil Creek State Park in Pennsylvania along the Erie-to-Pittsburgh Trail would yield 66 continuous miles. In trail infrastructure terms, a handful of short connector segments are often all that stand between an impressive but fragmented trail and a genuine long-distance destination. That is the kind of high-leverage investment that trail advocates understand well.
What's on the Ground in Each State
In Ohio, the network includes some of the region's most celebrated rail-trail conversions. The Ohio and Erie Canalway Towpath Trail — a fully paved, extensively developed route running through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park — anchors the Cleveland-to-Pittsburgh corridor on its northern end. The Western Reserve Greenway adds miles through the rolling farmland of northeastern Ohio, and the Little Beaver Creek Trail dips into creek-bottom terrain heading toward the Pennsylvania state line.
West Virginia contributes some of the network's most dramatic and remote terrain. The IHTC system features scenic wilderness, dramatic railroad tunnels and trestles, welcoming trail towns, and nearly three dozen pathways. West Virginia's contribution to that catalog is outsized relative to its size: the Mon River Rail Trail, the West Fork River Trail, the North Bend Rail Trail, and the Sheepskin Rail Trail are among the most evocative rail-trail conversions in the eastern United States, all of them passing through landscapes that have largely been bypassed by the modern interstate highway economy and retain a rawness that is increasingly hard to find.
In Pennsylvania, the network's backbone is a dense web of trails radiating from Pittsburgh. The Three Rivers Heritage Trail provides a scenic urban link along the city's iconic waterfront. The Montour Trail — a 62-mile loop through the southwestern Pennsylvania countryside — serves as a connector between multiple corridors. The Panhandle Trail crosses into West Virginia. The Sandy Creek Trail pushes north into the Pennsylvania Wilds. The Industrial Heartland Trails network will eventually total more than 1,450 miles of multi-use trail linking the western Pennsylvania cities of Erie and Pittsburgh with neighbors in Ohio, West Virginia, and New York.
The Historical Arc: From Steel and Coal to Trail and Tourism
To understand why the IHTC is so significant — and why it carries a cultural weight that purely recreational trail projects often lack — you have to understand the industrial geography it is built on top of. The rail corridors that the IHTC is converting into multiuse trails were not built for recreation. They were built to move raw material: coal from the West Virginia mountains, steel from the Pittsburgh mills, coke from the beehive ovens that once dotted the Connellsville seam country. The communities along these routes grew up around that economy, and when the economy collapsed in the 1970s and 1980s, they were left with the physical infrastructure of an industrial world that no longer existed — rail grades, trestles, tunnels, industrial buildings — and very little else.
Rail-trail conversion transforms that liability into an asset. The same flat grade that made a rail line economical to operate makes it an ideal biking surface. The same tunnels that once routed trains through ridgelines now give cyclists a dramatic passage through solid rock. The coke ovens and mine tipples that line many of these corridors become interpretive stops rather than eyesores. The Little Beaver Creek Greenway in Ohio offers an intriguing mix of both untouched natural vistas and man-made relics from the corridor's industrial past, such as a row of hauntingly beautiful coke ovens. That combination of natural beauty and industrial history is the IHTC's signature aesthetic — and it is genuinely unlike anything you will find on the trails of the mountain West.
Trail Towns: The Economic Engine Behind the Network
Bikepackers tend to think about trails as lines on a map. Trail planners think about them as economic development infrastructure. The IHTC does both — and the economic case for completing the network is, in many of the affected communities, the most compelling argument for the investment. IHTC's vision is that the Industrial Heartland will become a premier destination offering a 1,500-mile multi-use trail network experience — and the economic research supporting that vision is substantial.
The Great Allegheny Passage, which connects Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, and is one of the anchor trails of the IHTC network, is the model here. By the early 2020s, the GAP Trail had become one of the most economically productive trail corridors in the country, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual visitor spending in communities that had otherwise seen little investment since the steel industry collapsed. Towns like Connellsville, Ohiopyle, and Frostburg had rebuilt their main streets around the trail economy — outfitters, breweries, bed-and-breakfasts, shuttle services — and the model had become a national template for post-industrial trail revitalization.
Completing the gaps in the trail network will provide increased access to safe active transportation routes and opportunities for physical activity to underserved populations throughout the project footprint — addressing barriers particularly significant in Pennsylvania, where African Americans have extremely high rates of obesity and chronic disease linked to poverty, limited access to grocery stores, and less access to parks and green space. Changes to the built environment will reduce these barriers while creating new connections to jobs, shopping centers, and healthier lifestyles. The IHTC's case is that trail investment is not a luxury for affluent recreational cyclists — it is infrastructure that serves entire communities.
The Bikepacking Perspective: How Riders Are Already Using the Network
For the self-supported cycling community, the IHTC network is already on the radar. The combination of flat-to-rolling rail-trail grades, frequent small-town resupply options, and easy camping access makes this corner of Appalachia unusually well suited to loaded bike travel — even for riders who are new to multiday self-supported touring. Unlike the more demanding bikepacking routes of the mountain West, where technical singletrack and remote logistics demand a high baseline of skill and experience, the IHTC corridors are genuinely accessible to anyone comfortable riding a loaded bike on gravel or pavement for multiple consecutive days.
That accessibility does not mean the riding is boring. The river valleys of West Virginia drop into dramatic gorges. The ridgeline crossings in southwestern Pennsylvania involve real climbing. And the sheer diversity of the network — urban riverfront trails in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, remote woodland corridors in the PA Wilds, small-town Main Streets in eastern Ohio — means that no two consecutive days on the IHTC feel alike. Some segments wind through wooded ravines, open farm fields, wildlife-rich wetlands, and past charming covered bridges.
The IHTC also benefits from an existing bikepacking culture in the region that has been building for years. The GAP Trail and C&O Canal combination — a 335-mile route from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. — has long been one of the premier beginner bikepacking routes in the country, and it has seeded a generation of mid-Atlantic and Appalachian cyclists who understand how to plan multiday trail travel. Many of those riders are already extending their trips by linking the GAP with other IHTC corridors, effectively building their own custom long-distance routes through the network.
Planning a Ride on the IHTC: What Riders Need to Know Now
The IHTC's GoTo Trails platform, developed as part of the coalition's broader planning effort, is the primary resource for riders planning to explore the network. It aggregates trail status, surface conditions, access points, and facilities across the multi-state footprint — which is essential given that the network spans dozens of individual trail systems managed by different local entities. The coalition has produced a range of trail itineraries designed to take some of the work out of planning, offering mile-by-mile suggestions for specific trails as well as thematic routes — including stops at ice cream shops and breweries, and tours of epic infrastructure like tunnels, bridges, and industrial relics across the full 52-county area.
Riders should be aware that the network is still a work in progress, and that some gaps require short on-road connections that are manageable but not ideal. The good news is that the gaps are shrinking steadily, and the IHTC's coalition structure means that local trail advocates are actively monitoring and reporting conditions across all corridors. For a bikepacker willing to do a moderate amount of pre-trip research, it is already possible to string together multiday routes of 200 to 400 miles within the existing network without hitting a gap that requires significant improvisation.
The Bigger Picture: The IHTC in the Context of America's Trail Renaissance
The IHTC does not exist in isolation. It is part of a broader national surge in multiuse trail development that has been building for decades and is now accelerating. Since 1986, Rails to Trails Conservancy has stood at the forefront of America's efforts to make it safer and easier to walk, bike, and be active outside — and today there are more than 42,500 miles of multiuse trails on the ground nationwide, with more than 150 trail networks in development reaching into every single state.
The crown jewel of that national effort is the Great American Rail-Trail, which dwarfs even the IHTC in raw ambition. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has unveiled the 3,700-mile Great American Rail-Trail route, a multiuse trail that will span the United States from coast to coast. The route will traverse 12 states and the District of Columbia over 3,700 miles. Importantly, the IHTC network connects to the Great American Rail-Trail's corridor through Pennsylvania and the Midwest — meaning riders who complete the IHTC's 1,500-mile web could theoretically continue east toward Washington, D.C., or link into the broader transcontinental route heading west.
The IHTC also complements the Adventure Cycling Association's established route network. The Adventure Cycling Route Network, developed since 1974, comprises over 52,000 miles of routes for bicycle touring in the U.S. and Canada and is the largest such network in North America. Where Adventure Cycling's routes tend to favor rural highways and roads, the IHTC's rail-trail focus offers something distinct: truly traffic-free riding through densely populated, historically rich terrain. The two systems are complementary rather than competitive — and a growing number of cross-country bikepackers are using both to design bespoke routes that combine the best of each.
What Completion of the IHTC Would Actually Mean
It is worth pausing to consider what a fully realized 1,500-mile IHTC network would represent in practical terms. At a comfortable touring pace of 50 to 60 miles per day — appropriate for a loaded bike on mixed rail-trail and gravel surfaces — a rider could spend 25 to 30 days exploring the network before retracing their path. At a more aggressive pace, combining the main corridors into a point-to-point route with a return via a different corridor, you could construct a loop of a month or more without ever riding the same stretch of trail twice.
That kind of riding depth is what separates a true trail network from a simple long-distance route. A single line, however spectacular, gives you one experience. A network gives you infinite ones. The IHTC's spoke-and-hub structure, radiating out from Pittsburgh in multiple directions, means that riders can design their own adventures within it — a weekend sufferfest on the P2P, a week-long loop through eastern Ohio, or a full-month expedition from Lake Erie to the West Virginia border and back. The network becomes what you make of it.
A recent study by Rails-to-Trails Conservancy finds that the remaining gaps in the P2P corridor could be closed, and the potential of the corridor realized, within the next decade. If that timeline holds across the other corridors as well, the complete IHTC network could be a reality by the mid-2030s — a genuinely transformative moment for trail-based adventure in the eastern United States.
The Riders Who Will Define This Network
Every great trail has its defining riders — the people who complete it early enough to establish the culture and the lore that others follow. The IHTC is still early enough in its development that those riders haven't all been identified yet. Some of them are already out there, quietly stringing together existing corridors and posting trip reports on bikepacking forums. Others are waiting for the final gaps to close before committing to a thru-ride. But the community is forming.
What's clear is that the IHTC is not positioning itself as a niche destination for hardcore adventure cyclists only. The network's design — rail-trail grades, frequent resupply towns, manageable daily mileage options — makes it accessible to a much broader population of cyclists than, say, the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. The approximately 2,700-mile Great Divide Mountain Bike Route crisscrosses the Continental Divide and is one of the world's longest off-pavement routes — a legitimate wilderness experience that demands a high level of preparation. The IHTC, by contrast, is the kind of trail where a rider doing their first multiday bikepacking trip can find their footing, while still offering enough distance, variety, and history to hold the interest of seasoned long-distance cyclists.
That accessibility is its own kind of ambition. America's trail network has always been built on the idea that extraordinary outdoor experiences should be available to more than just the most physically capable or financially resourced riders. The IHTC is the most concrete expression of that idea currently under construction in the eastern United States — and when it is complete, it will be one of the most significant recreational infrastructure achievements in the country's history. The only question is how many riders will show up to ride it.
