James J. Hill gives us another gift

I already told you about the James J. Hill mansion on Summit Avenue overlooking downtown St. Paul. But it turns out that Hill made other gifts that ended up being way cooler than this grand old house.

As I mentioned, Hill was the builder of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads. Both those railroads laid thousands of miles of track all over the state of Minnesota, as well as other states. When all those old railroads ceased operations, they turned the land under the rail beds over to the states, and Minnesota has made most of those old rail beds into mixed use hiking and biking paths.

We found the Browns Creek trail, which runs from the center of downtown Stillwater next to the St. Croix River up the bluffs about 5 miles. As an old rail bed, even though the trail winds its way to the top of the steep St. Croix River bluffs, it maintains no more than a 3% grade, mostly by following the creek bed of Browns Creek. We biked up that trail to its end and back down again yesterday. It was grand and peaceful, mostly shaded, and basically flat.

We spotted this dead rattle snake about halfway through our ride. It was over 4 feet long – what a shame as it looked like someone had gone out of their way just to run it over – not cool! When we got to the end, we discovered another trail – the Gateway Trail – which also runs through an old Northern Pacific rail bed, the one that used to run from St. Paul to Duluth. The interpretive board about the trail indicated that the paved portion stretched from Pine Point Park about 20 miles into downtown St. Paul.

We found the park, and clipped off about 7 of the 20 miles today. The trail is great and more rural than the Browns Creek trail, so we heard very little except for the singing birds and the soft ripple of the winds. We turned at a small parking area which we will try to find another day and then complete the trail into downtown – it should be great fun.

Thank you Mr. Hill!

Talk to you soon!