Check out this nice article about the Great Allegheny Passage in USA Today. It tells a brief history as well as how it’s been a “boon for small towns”

The article has a nice video, but we took it off of our site because it automatically starts up with an ad.
BOSTON, Pa. — In the end, after crossing six soaring bridges, burrowing through four mountain tunnels, journeying over the Eastern Continental Divide and taking in miles of jaw-dropping vistas, a formerly dubious Lolly Marchant, 61, dismounts her bicycle and declares that given the chance, she’d do it all over again.

Barbara Wood, 70, nursing a broken finger from a run-in with a gate 67 miles back, vows to get back on the bike for another multi-day bike tour later this month.

And only nine months after she told her husband, Joe, he was crazy to think she could handle — much less enjoy — a 330-mile bike ride, Patti Carr, 48, proclaims their marriage is as solid as ever.

The three have just reached the end of the Great Allegheny Passage, one in a vast network of bike/walking paths cleaved from abandoned rail lines. Stretching 136 miles from Cumberland, Md., to Duquesne, Pa., the trail links to the C&O Canal towpath that starts in Washington, D.C., creating a blissfully traffic-free cyclists’ haven.

The trail, whether tackled whole or in smaller pieces, presents a recession-resistant getaway for a variety of budgets at a time of year when the Allegheny Mountains are rich in fall color.

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