BARBERTON: It took patience — lots of patience — to win approval for the final section of the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail in Summit County.
Metro Parks, Serving Summit County, negotiated for five years with the Akron Barberton Cluster Railway to get permission to build a tunnel under its active rail line.
The railroad, a subsidiary of the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, relented, and now the $1.8 million section of trail is nearly complete, park planner David Whited said.
Summit, with 41.1 miles of the popular bike-and-hike trail, will become the first county to have finished the trail from border to border. Stark, Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas counties are still building.
In 1993, the National Park Service opened the first 19.7 miles in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Now, 81 miles of the 101-mile trail from Cleveland through Akron to New Philadelphia have been built at a cost of about $93 million. It is the major feature of the federally designated Ohio & Erie National Heritage Canalway and gets 2.5 million visitors a year, according to park officials.
Akron last month dedicated a 0.6-mile section near Bartges Avenue.
With the two Summit County completions, the Towpath Trail will be uninterrupted from Harvard Avenue in Cleveland south to Massillon, a distance of about 63 miles.
Cuyahoga County still has five miles to build in Cleveland; Stark County, about a half mile in Massillon and Bethlehem Township; and Tuscarawas County, about 14.6 miles near Bolivar and between Zoar and New Philadelphia.
Tuscarawas County last month received a $150,000 grant to build 2.7 miles between Zoar and Zoarville.
“Getting the trail done first in Summit County is a tremendous accomplishment by our partners,” said Dan Rice, president and chief executive of the Akron-based Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition, a grass-roots group promoting the federal corridor and the trail.
“Looking back, it’s a major accomplishment to see how much progress we’ve made in such a short time. We’ve overcome challenges to make it happen.”
The new section has not formally opened, although bicyclists and walkers already have discovered it.
The contractor is working on fencing, signs, railings and other finishing touches, and the trail will open soon, said Nate Eppink, a spokesman for the park district.
The new section is one of the most complicated and most expensive Metro Parks has built, Whited said.
The 0.6-mile section runs south from the Snyder Avenue Trailhead, crosses the old canal and then runs next to Wolf Creek. It crosses the Tuscarawas River on a 494-foot wooden-deck bridge and skirts two old landfills. It tunnels under the rail line and the edge of PPG Industries’ Lime Lake No. 3.
A large solar panel powers the five lights that illuminate the tunnel.
The new section then connects to the trail and a wooden boardwalk that runs along Van Buren Road south into New Franklin.
The new section is tucked largely between the Tuscarawas River and the tracks.
There is a subdued scenic quality to the new trail, especially where Wolf Creek flows into the Tuscarawas River.
Haynes Construction Inc. of Norwalk handled trail construction. Work began in April.
The trail was built on a 40-foot-wide swath of land the park district has leased from the railroad, plus land owned by PPG Industries, Barberton and the Barberton Community Development Corp.
Howe House project
In related news, construction is expected to begin in mid-December to connect the Richard Howe House to the Towpath Trail in downtown Akron.
The work is expected to be completed by spring.
The historic city-owned house sits on the west side of the canal, and the trail is on the east side, along West Exchange Street.
That project calls for a small bridge over the canal and a culvert and steps to the sidewalk off Exchange to improve access to the historic house.
The project was supported with grants from the Summit County Trail and Greenway, the S.L. Gimbal Foundation and the Jean Thomas Lambert Foundation, which together provided $50,000.
The Howe House is considered a major Akron trailhead for the Towpath Trail.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.