Today, many brick buildings from that era house boutiques and antiques stores. Located near the top of the grade in the north, Thomas was a bustling center for the coal mines that sprang up nearby and shipped their product via the railroad. The trail surface is rough, so hiking shoes are recommended for hikers, and wide tires are recommended for cyclists.

Today’s visitors can arrange for a shuttle to Thomas to take a one-way downhill ride or choose to steadily climb from Hendricks and coast downhill on the return. The uphill grade between Hendricks and Thomas, which climbs 1,200 feet, required trains hauling coal to put on extra locomotives. The trail has a steeper than normal grade in the 1880s, the railroad builders who laid track across the route through the Allegheny Mountains couldn’t avoid the forested canyon up the Blackwater River and its North Fork.

On its 10.7-mile run deep through the Monongahela National Forest in eastern West Virginia, the rough dirt trail passes waterfalls and relics of the railroad and coal industries. The Blackwater Canyon Trail follows one of the most challenging and picturesque segments of the former West Virginia Central & Pittsburgh Railway.

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