It's hard to say exactly where it all began but you'd have to start Larry Ridenour who mapped many of the current rail-trails out back in the 60's. Not much happened until around 1981 when all the steel mills left and took the coal mines with them, leaving the Montour with some newly refurbished track and structures but nothing to haul. So they closed up and sold all the line in Peters to the Township, in 1984, where a lady by the name of Joanne Nelson, Parks Director in Peters, convinced the supervisors and residents to build a trail. If that trail hadn't been there to point to--well let's not think about that.

About 1987, Hank Parke, referred to by George Schmidt as the granddaddy of the trail movement in Western Pennsylvania, started a group in Somerset Country to build what was then called the Connellsville-to-Cumberland Trail and later became the Allegheny Highlands Trail.

The value of such trails in our area was not lost on the Pittsburgh Council of the American Youth Hostels' President Larry Laude. AYH member Jack Peth surveyed the trail photographically some time in 1988, by hiking, biking, walking and driving where necessary.

Around that time unknown to each other some independent individuals had also concluded that this abandoned right-of-way (ROW) had serious trail potential. Tim Killmeyer had been scouting the ROW and contacting Joanne Nelson and the supervisors of his own Robinson Township. Stan Sattinger, a rail-fan and rails-to-trails member had been making inquiries of his own.

In 1986, I moved to the Lindenbrooke apartments with my wife and active 5-year-old son, Adam. We lived on the lower level and I was forever chasing after Adam who wandered to the upper level and sometimes down this "dirt path" that happened to be there. One day, he got down that path pretty far and as I was following the path, planning how I was going to bring about his demise, it dawned on me that this path would be perfect for running, walking and bicycling. Since the boy's life was miraculously spared, I took he, his bike and our dog for an exploratory outing. We eventually made it all the way to what is now the Brush Run parking lot in Peters. On another excursion, we crossed Brush Run Road and made it to the present day Bethel Park Trail at Limestone Road. It always amazed me that the trail seemed to be wilderness even though the area immediately adjacent was rather heavily populated. We picked Blackberries later on apples, and watched the seasons change. We encountered all sorts of wildlife, most notably a thick 5 foot long Black snake that hissed at the dog and a deer that leaped out of the blackberry bushes about 3 feet away, startling the hell out of us.

Our dog, Spot, had the first of his near death experiences on the trail that fall. As you drop down from Brush Run Road on the undeveloped section, there are now some very new and high-end homes. Back in '86 that was a fenced-in horse corral. Spot found a break in the fence and was having the time of his life chasing the horses around. Suddenly, they turned on him and he ran toward us and bounced off the fence. Lying there dazed with the horses thundering toward him and with Adam and I screaming at the top our lungs for him to get up, he finally did and the speed of youth took him around the corral again until he found the little break in the fence that got him in there in the first place.

We had a lot of fun on the path that summer and fall and when we moved away in 1987, I still didn't know how far that path actually went. Later on, I found out that the path was actually an old railroad line that was something like 50 miles long. Larry Laude and some AYH members gave me some more details and in late '88, suggested that they needed someone to look into getting this thing developed into a trail. Larry put me in touch with George Schmidt who suggested some additional contacts, among them Hank Parke, Joanne Nelson Herb Higginbotham who led me to Dave Wright, and the Rails-to-Trails organization. I believe I called Joanne first and she put me in touch with Tim Killmeyer.

I wrote a short article about some of my early findings trying to sell the idea that this could be an excellent trail for our area. It appeared in the AYH newsletter during early 1989. A short while later, this guy called me and suggested we meet at the next AYH meeting and talk about the Montour. On a dark Thursday night in the middle of the winter in the crowded equipment shed where AYH meetings were held, this professorial looking fellow complete with glasses and a goatee introduced himself to me as Stan Sattinger. I had no idea what kind of long term adventure we were about to undertake.

In early 1989, anticipating construction of the Robinson Towne Center and its effects on the community, Tim Killmeyer attended a planning meeting held at the Howard Johnson's across from the Tonidale. The Montour Railroad Right-of-Way (ROW) was noted on the display map.

Since Tim and his wife, Chris, had moved to the Robinson Township area in 1981, he had often considered that the railbed would make an excellent trail, much like the ones he had observed in Washington, DC, during a high school trip some 15 years earlier. To fully understand why a high school kid would notice such things, you must know that Tim and his buddy Jim Bukovac, upon graduating from Canevin High, in 1974, promptly hopped on ten speeds for a vacation ride to Niagara Falls and back.

While speaking with a PennDot official at the meeting, he learned that Peters Township had bought a similar portion of the ROW and had a finished trail in place. Furthermore, he learned that the ROW in Robinson extended all the way to Peters and beyond.

The official put Tim in touch with Joanne Nelson, in Peters, who related that she too had been inspired by trails observed in other parts of the country. Joanne forwarded a packet of Arrowhead Trail materials, which Tim reviewed prior to making contact with the Robinson Township Parks and Recreation Board. He was able to convince board members Keith Schmidt and Don Halbedel to put him on the agenda for their next meeting.

It was about that time that Stan and I, having also been in touch with Joanne, called Tim. He was only too happy to take us along to the meeting. I also invited Larry Laude, Joe Hoechner, Chuck and Lynn Ejzak from AYH. That first of three meetings with the Parks and Recreation Board was held in the Spring of '89 and each was followed by another meeting at the Brothers Grimm Lounge, which has to go down in history as the first un-official meeting place of the Montour Trail Council.

It seemed to us that while the board supported us in principle, they were not quite ready to take on this project. We also began to appreciate that we would have to go through this kind of process in each of the municipalities that the trail passed through. Therefore, this was not a job for a few guys who like to ride bikes and drink beer. We would need an organization of like-minded individuals to work collectively toward building this trail.

We also knew that the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) was conducting a feasibility study of all of the ROW's in Western Pennsylvania that had been identified as potentially having "the right stuff." We needed the endorsement of this process to begin seriously selling the project. At that point, Stan and I decided to step back and begin some behind the scenes recruiting. We would soon begin to meet some of the individuals who would work very closely with us over the next few years.