Marlinton, WV - Greenbrier River Trail (4/22 - 5/2/25)

Now that we are back in the US, we need to get back to biking on rail trails. This time we headed to West Virginia to ride the Hall of Fame rail trail, Greenbrier River Trail. We found a great campground right on the trail in Marlinton. The Marlinton Creek and Trail Campground was also close to restaurants and stores in a fairly remote area of the state.

This trail is 78 miles long and is made up of a crushed limestone surface similar to many unpaved rail trails in the US.

This trail follows the river the entire distance and was loaded with scenic views. We rode the entire trail over several days doing out-and-backs to get us almost 160 miles of riding distance during our visit.

There are two tunnels that weren't too long (dark) or wet to get through without too much effort.

Along the way, there are restored depots for rest breaks. There are also plenty of benches and restrooms as well.

Here is another tunnel that was built 126 years ago.

This railroad was primarily built to haul timber from the surrounding mountains to several timber mills for production of lumber to supply a growing country.

The trail also has 35 trestles along the way.

While we were here, we had great weather that could have been worse for April in the mountains. This trail was not too far from the Snowshoe Mountain Ski Resort.

Preservation of historic railroad artifacts are seen in many places along the trail.

This trail is probably one of the most remote trails we have seen and is located in the National Radio Quite Zone (NRQZ) which made cell phones fairly useless in many areas.

The railroad declined in use once the timber resources were depleted using clear-cut timber processing.

Since this place is so beautiful and serene, we did see quite a few vacation cabins along the river.

As with most rail trails, there are trestles made with both iron and wood.

At the north end of the trail in Cass, there is a state park where you can take scenic train rides.

This trail also has 16 primitive campsites, with several having three-sided shelters for first-come use if you want to bikepack or backpack the trail.

Being near a river, of course you'll find creeks and calming waterfalls flowing down the mountainside to join the river below.

The campground in Marlinton didn't have a bunch of amenities, but the sites were large with full hookups and with great views of nature.

Once we completed riding the trail, we took one afternoon to visit the Lost World Caverns near Lewisburg on the south end of the trail.

We stayed at the West Virginia State Fairgrounds in Lewisburg for a few days while riding the southern end and found this cave on the map nearby.

We have been to a few caves this year and this one may have had more features packed into one area that we have seen so far.

This self-guided tour was only about 120' below the surface, so getting back up wasn't too strenuous.

Fortunately we did not see much evidence of damage caused by humans like we have seen in other caves.

The rest of the cave pictures can speak for themselves.

Lewisburg is also close to the exclusive Greenbrier Resort. In addition to the many restaurants, shops, and golf, this is also where the cold war era "bunker" for Congress was located. This place is pricey! We each had a house-level drink at the bar and the bill came to $44. We were thinking of having dinner here, but decided to save our money and eat elsewhere.

From here we head west to Missouri to ride the Katy Trail in places we have not seen before and return to ones we loved. See my next blog post on what we did there!