Obstacles remain for Missouri rail trails

Southeast Missouri could provide fertile ground for rails-to-trails development, but creating trails here would likely be a more difficult task than it has been in Southern Illinois.

The Southeast Missouri area owes much of its development to the railroads of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early entrepreneurs like Louis Houck built rail lines through the woods and swamps of the region and created towns along the way like Brownwood and Advance.

Remains can still be seen of some of those tracks, like the rail bed still visible in Delta and the raised terrain indicating old rail beds along Highway 25. Houck's lines stretched throughout the area from Arkansas in the south to Ste. Genevieve in the north to Carter County in the west and the Mississippi River in the east.

However those lines have long been abandoned, and the rights to the land have reverted to the several property owners that live near the old rail bed. In order for a trail to be constructed, the land would have to be purchased from each property owner in a process far more intensive than railbanking.

When a railroad decides to abandon a stretch of track, it can railbank that line, putting it aside for future possible use. When a track is railbanked, a not-for-profit or local government entity can ask the railroad if the line can be converted to a trail. If the railroad agrees, then the not-for-profit trail group or local government pays compensation for the use of the railbed.

Railbanking could be possible in the next few years on nearly 21 miles of track between Malden and Lilbourn owned by Union Pacific Railroad. The company has started the process of abandoning the line pending approval by the federal government.

If the company abandons the line, that line could be railbanked at the request of local governments in the area.