Even for a town that is over three hundred years old, sometimes things can be shaken up which opens up new views for the casual walker. A store burns to the ground, a familiar house gets leveled, or a street becomes closed all resulting in entirely unexpected perspectives such as a old barn revealed, or garden perviously blocked by a garage, comes alive once a significant obstacle is removed.
In a little place like Chestertown, those small moments of discovery are among the most satisfying, and yet quite rare for the town’s professional class of strollers, or flâneurs, as the French best describe the behavior. With or without their dogs, our town flâneurs, and we have many, are constantly on the look out for some new vista, and yet most of the time come up quite short in their quest.
The emerging walk and bike path, which will be known as the Chestertown Trail, is now being build where abandoned railroad tracks once laid in the eastern part of town, should offer these long suffering strollers countless new outlooks to entertain for years to come.
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The trail reminds the Spy of the rich new viewscapes that New Yorkers experienced after the High Line park in the old meat packing district was opened a few years ago. Once only used by elevated trains, the High Line is now an entirely unique vertical public open space that shows visitors streets and buildings never seen before by most. A back alley view where all secrets are proudly exposed.
The same impact can be felt with our new trail. New cutaway views of barns, farm land, small and big houses, factories, a cemetery, playfields, and finally a college, offer dramatic points of contrast of a town in transition, and yet still surprisingly stationary, with the old and new, the deserted and the reclaimed, overlapping with each other.
While this alone would be reason to cheer, the trail also offers some of the most extraordinarily beautiful tree canopies found in the County. From almost the beginning of the Dixon Value plant to the Bypass, the trail is almost completely shaded, which makes it a perfect path during the hot summer months that promise to be hotter in the years ahead.
The roundtrip walk from the Tidewater Trader train station office to Morgnec Road takes about 40 minutes. Once the trail is completed, a bike ride from downtown to the Decker Theater or Kirby Stadium won’t be more than five minutes one way. Or, if you were going from the College to the Chester River, you might need to add another minute. It is not hard to see the remarkable potential for this new transportation axis is for Chestertown.
The trail will be officially open this coming winter.
Briggs says
Another gem in the sparkling jewel that is Chestertown. Well done Mayor, Council and town employees!
Catty One says
Very nice slide show, Spy!
Er, is that foot bridge safe to walk on…….
John Hutchison says
Wonderful!!! I am very much looking forward to this! So is my Chocolate Lab, Chauncey….
Rory Rivers says
Very pleased with the trail! Wouldn’t it be great if it continued out to Worton, giving Chestertown kids access to that fancy new rec. center? I for one would have loved to be able to bike to high school. How can we make that happen?
Joyce Benton says
Rory, hope this happens. It would be wonderful to have a trail like Kent Island!!!! I will be glad to be able to bike to downtown without being run over my motorists down 213!!!
Melinda says
Yes, Rory and Joyce, to the trail going to the Worton community Center!
It would enable so many more folks to be able to have a safe, healthy, beautiful way to access the Center w/o having to rely on public transportation; oops, I forgot, we don’;t have public transportation…
At one point that was part of the trail plan. Could it still become the reality it was planned to be? That would be terrific and another jewel in our lovely county.
Joe says
I can’t wait for it to open and would love to see this go to Worton and beyond. I’ve biked on rails-to-trails in several states and have always had a positive experience.
Doug says
Your photos are a great introduction to the trail. It appears to be walkable now – is it?
Barry says
The photos look great and my wife and I can’t wait to try out the trail. However, from the photos it looks like it’s not going to be ready for a while. It looks like just the base course of DGA has been laid down. The surface course of some material that meets ADA standards has yet to be placed.
Frank Gerber says
Thank you C-town Spy for this wonderful preview of what’s to come. I hope they will be able to surface it with somthing other than the heat absorbing black top that was used at the foot of the trail down by the RRCars.
The work that was done on the rain garden in Wilmur park was also very nice. It’s unfortunate that the adjacient parking lot was resurfaced with that same heat absorbing black top. Are we doing good things ? Absolutely. Can we always continue to do better ? Let’s hope so.
Back to the Future says
Will whomever is constructing this be putting up a barrier for some or the eyesores that line the route? It will be harder to turn that blind eye along this trail.
Barry says
Frank:
During the week, I work for my home County’s Open Space Program. My job includes the development of new parks in our County Park system. When we design walking trails we use a porous, ADA compliant stabilized stone surfacing manufactured by the G. Schofield Company, Inc.. They produce it in many colors (including light tans and greys). After it is placed and compacted, it is bicycle and wheel-chair friendly and it’s permeable. The fact that it’s permeable is a big deal in my State because non-point source pollution control is important and it is tied into most permits needed for any development. If it hasn’t already, C-town should look into using a similar product for this trail. It works very well.
Frank Gerber says
@Barry,
Please tell the Mayor.
Gibson says
Frank and Barry,
I will check out the surface Barry mentioned. I’ve looked at pervious concrete (cooler, transmits water). Problem is that it is hard (rough to fall on) and much more expensive. I just biked the Rehoboth to Lewis (Junction Breakwater Trail) three times this weekend. Great ride!. They use a combination of surfaces (blacktop, concrete, roadway, gravel, packed stone dust, boardwalk). The limiting factor and difference with the C-town trail appears to be that we would need to be able to include road bikes (curled handle bars and skinny tires). They require smoother/harder surface than packed stone because the skinny tires are suseptable to changes in the surface. The inclusion of road bikes is important because the gateway park property the town just purchased at Flatland Road and 20 is a perfect stepping off point for road bikers using county roads. The rail trail will provide a downtown connection for people parking cars at gateway park. It would be nice to be able to bike downtown from the gateway park and eat/shop/attend an event via road bike. This also take pressure off downtown parking during events if we encourage that parking strategy. (lunch break is over).
Barry says
Gibson:
We use a 3 inch layer of the stabilized aggregate that is laid atop 6 inches of compacted DGA. The stabilized aggregate has a bonding agent mixed into it. After it’s placed (and we often use a 10 foot wide paver for this), it needs to be throughly wetted (to activate the bonding agent) and allowed to set for 48 hrs or so. After it sets, we compact this layer with a vibratory roller. It usually takes multiple passes with the roller to compact it properly. But once it’s compacted, it can be used by visitors on bicycles (street, mountain and hybrid) and or in wheel chairs without any problem. I’m sure that similar products available in the Kent County area. Check with your town engineer’s office and have them research it for you.
Frank Gerber says
@barry, any data on how it holds up throufh several freezing and heating cycles (winter- summer winter – summer bla bla bla)?
Barry says
Frank:
It holds up well through frost/thaw cycles. We’ve been using it in our Park trails for the last six years. The only maintenance issues with it are that since it’s porous, we need to keep up with weed control. We also need to keep up with a little bit of erosion control if it’s placed on sloping ground.
Side by side on a spreadsheet, this type of surfacing is more expensive to place than bituminous paving. But as I said earlier, in my State (NJ) non point source pollution control is tied into most development permits. So for us, the use of bituminous paving comes with a host of other hidden costs that ultimately skyrocket the cost. We looked for alternatives and found that this porous surfacing works for us. But ultimately, it all comes down to economics.. which are the same in C-town as they are for us in NJ. We work with the funding that we have in place and the regulatory hoops that we need to jump through, in order to give the public the best and most cost-effective recreational experience possible.