Mountain Biking along Railroad Byways

BIKING ALONG EARLY ROUTES

OF THE IRON HORSE

Rails to Trails

TEXT BY TOM DOLLAR PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACK DYKINGA In early February, just before daybreak, on the outskirts of Benson, Arizona, Tom Bingham and I unload our mountain bikes from the rack atop my pickup truck's camper shell. A few laggard stars glimmer icily, and my bike's metal frame burns with the cold.

I'll need my stretch tights and long-fingered biking gloves when we start out, for the first couple of hours at least, until the sun subdues the snap in the air, and we can strip down to shorts and T-shirts.

Our plan is to ride a utility road alongside the Southern Pacific Railroad right-of-way that runs south from Benson toward Fairbank. Our maps show the roadway, somewhat indistinctly in places, but we intend to find a route, even if we have to employ our bikes as battering rams to crash through heavy brush invad-ing the pathway.

RAILS TO TRAILS

I asked Tom Bingham to come along for three reasons. First, as owner, chief guide, cook, and all-around hand holder for Trails Unlimited, a Tucson-based backcountry expedition company, he's the kind of guy you want along on an adventure, even a mild winter-day's outing such as this. Second, he's a good map reader and, since one of the things we hope to do on this trip is uncover evidence of other longabandoned railroad grades, I figure I'll need his discerning eye for subtle yet revealing variations in terrain. Third, and maybe most importantly, Tom is a skilled and daring cyclist, just nutty enough to try almost anything on a mountain bike.

Around the turn of the century, the southeastern corner of the Arizona Territory was interlaced with train tracks. Railroad builders competed fiercely to build profitable new lines with such stalwart figures as Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Jay Gould vying for ascendancy. The Southern Pacific Railroad spanned the state from Yuma to the New Mexico border, cutting through Tucson, Benson, Willcox, Bowie, and San Simon. The New Mexico and Arizona Railroad ran south from Benson along the San Pedro River to its confluence with the Babocomari River before turning southwest toward Nogales. There it was to link with the Sonora Railway Limited into Mexico to give Arizona access to a deepwater seaport at Guaymas on the Sea of Cortes. The Arizona and South Eastern, known locally as the "Bisbee Line," came northward from Bisbee to join at Fairbank with the New Mexico and Arizona to provide a long-sought link with Benson. The El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, the "Sunshine Line," ran northeast from Douglas, through the broad San Bernardino Valley into New Mexico. A number of shorter lines, the Mascot and Western Railroad Company, the Johnson, Dragoon & Northern Railway, the Tombstone and Southern Railroad Company, and the Calumet and Arizona some narrow gauge, some standard - connected places the big railroad builders neglected. Today most of those railroads - freight lines, passenger lines, and "mixed trains" - exist in memory only. Aligned, and often realigned, during the days just before and after Arizona's statehood in 1912, vestiges of these railroads are scattered over the landscape of southeastern Arizona. But it takes a sharp eye to detect some of the old grades, now eroded berms overgrown with weeds and thornbushes. Although the prospect of a hard ride in good weather made us eager to get going, Tom and I are out for more than a mountain-bike adventure. Having learned of successful rails-to-trails conversions in other parts of the U.S., we're here to scout the potential of railroad corridors, both abandoned and active, for use in recreational pursuits. Today we're mountain biking, but we're just as enthusiastic about how these rightsof-way can be used for hiking, horseback riding, jogging, Bird-watching, or just plain moseying through the countryside. The sun rises as we mount up while a waning moon sets in the west. For the first few miles, the roadway is a virtual boulevard, wide and flat and lined with thick mesquite bosques on either side. In low spots, however, deep ruts baked into the clayey soils are reminders that after a hard rain these places become hub-sucking quagmires, not to be tested by mountain bike or, for that matter, any other vehicle. By 9:00 A.M. the temperature is a toasty 50° F, and, now warmed by exertion, we remove a layer of clothing. A solitary raven swooshes past, and squads of little gray birds advance ahead of us, flitting from bush to bush. There are plenty of tire tracks where other two-wheelers preceded us, but we see no one until late in the afternoon when a low rumble in the distance announces the return run of the lone freight train operating once daily between Benson and Bisbee. The crowns of big cottonwoods rise above thick brush to the east indicating we're close to the San Pedro River. Soon we start to see other overgrown railroad grades on both sides of the right-of-way we're following. Poring over the maps, we try to identify them. "Maybe this was the New Mexico and Arizona grade," Tom offers. And a minute later, "Well, now I'm not sure. Look, there's another grade on this side." Railroad debris is scattered about. What may have been a bridge or trestle timber, 12 by 12 inches and at least 24 feet from end to end, lies in the tangled undergrowth. A single tie, one end supported by a rock pile, stands upright, perhaps to mark a property boundary line. Scrap metal litters the entire length of the tracks: spikes, plates, and bands that we guess may have been used to fasten bundles of ties. At one point, we sidetrack down to the river bottom on a sandy jeep road. Although

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RAILS TO TRAILS.

Spring is more than a month off by calendar count, close up we see buds already forming on the cottonwoods.

One Fremont cottonwood with deep striations on its bark measures at least 30 feet in circumference. Swollen by recent rains, the river swirls past a half-submerged auto body with "Three Hundred" spelled out in raised-metal letters on its rear fender. Oldsmobile, Tom says. I say Chrysler. I doubt if either guess is right.

At one point, we lose the service road entirely and have to detour onto a nearby county road for a couple of miles before finding our route again. We ride parallel to the tracks south through the San Pedro Valley, the snow-laden peaks of the Huachuca Mountains ahead of us, the Whetstones and Dragoons in the distance on either side.

At lunch, sitting astride an old wooden tie, we reckon we've ridden about 15 miles from Benson. We've crossed grassy prairie and creosote flats, swooped down steep banks through washes and up the other sides and, where the river meanders close to the tracks, we've been delighted by vistas of the sun-dappled San Pedro.

On our next scouting expedition, we try another span of the same railroad corridor with Tom's friend, Ann Wartchow. This time we ride north from near the abandoned townsite of Charleston toward Fairbank. I find the going too rough and turn back, but Tom and Ann find a way through. That night we camp beneath the palisades on the west flank of the Dragoon Mountains, one of my favorite places.

The next day, we load up our bikes and drive south to Douglas to ride a portion of the abandoned El Paso and Southwestern Railroad grade that heads northeast out of Douglas across the San Bernardino Valley. The rails are removed, ties pulled up, cinders packed, forming a long, smooth, virtually flat pathway extending for approximately 50 miles, the Chiricahua Mountains rising on the west and the Peloncillos describing the New Mexico border on the east.

At its peak in 1920, the nation's railway system encompassed almost 300,000 miles of track but now is reduced to less than half that with more than 3,000 miles of right-of-way a distance greater than from New York to San Francisco - abandoned each year. What happens to these unused railroad corridors? Frequently, nothing. Forgotten, they fall into disuse and neglect.

However, in some locations abandoned railroad grades are converted into trailways. The Interstate Commerce Commission, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Department of the Interior are required by federal law to cooperate in such conversions.

The Rails to Trails Conservancy, based in Washington, D.C., with local chapters in five states (not including Arizona), was established in 1985. Overall, RTC functions as a national clearinghouse of information and lobbies Congress to implement simpler rails-to-trails regulations. To assist local governments and trail groups, RTC sends out notices of impending railroad abandonments and publishes Converting Rails-to-Trails: A Citizen's Manual and other publications offering information and advice.

Narrow though they may be, abandoned railroad corridors are perfect for conversion to hiking, biking, jogging, equestrian, and cross-country skiing trails. As small a parcel as 200 acres of right-of-way could be transformed into a 20-mile linear parkway, ideal for urban commuting or for recreation and nature study in rural areas. In fact, because railroads were often laid out across the gentle grades of broad river valleys, they provide excellent protection of wildlife habitat.

As frenzied as railroad building was in Arizona for a brief period around the turn of the century, it does not compare with the boom that occurred elsewhere. Old railroad atlases show that most Midwestern states, for example, were covered by a latticework of railroads. Arizona, by contrast, had relatively few, and that is one reason the state is not among the nation's leaders in rails-to-trails conversions. Another reason is that comparatively Few railroads have been abandoned in Arizona.

"If you look at railroad maps from 1948 and 1988, 40 years apart," says John Wengert, community affairs coordinator for RTC, "you don't see a lot of difference in Arizona unless you look very closely."

We're spoiled by wide-open spaces in the West, with vast tracts of public land open to bicycling, hiking, jogging, backpacking, skiing, bird-watching, botanizing — you name it. So, it's hard to spur as much interest in rails-to-trails conversions as in places where room for recreation is at a premium. Still, there are about 300 RTC members in Arizona. One suspects if they ever got acquainted and formed an active Arizona RTC chapter, a grassroots rails-to-trails movement might just take hold.

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