Katy Trail State Park

The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, the Katy, ran trains up the Missouri valley until 1986, when it gave up the line from Machens in St. Charles County to Sedalia. An amendment to the National Trails System Act let corridors no longer needed for trains be banked for future rail use and opened as trails in the meantime, and Missouri State Parks took the right-of-way that way. Edward D. "Ted" Jones Jr., of the Edward Jones brokerage, had ridden a rail-trail in Wisconsin and lobbied the legislature for this one, and he and his wife Pat gave $2.2 million to buy the corridor.

Construction began in 1987, and the first section opened at Rocheport on April 28, 1990, six months before Ted Jones died. In 1991 the Union Pacific donated 33 miles from Sedalia to east of Clinton, and purchases and gifts filled in the rest. The finished trail is 240 miles long, with 26 trailheads and four restored depots. From Cooper County to St. Charles it is an official segment of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.

Rocheport is a good place to start. The trail passes through the railroad's stone tunnel there, and for long stretches it runs with the river on one side and bluffs on the other. Telegraph poles, truss bridges and old depot towns line the way, and dogwood and redbud bloom in spring. Since 2010 the Katy Land Trust has worked with landowners to protect farms and woods along the corridor.