The Sauganash Trail

The Sauganash Trail is short and sweet. This rails-to-trails, AKA the Valley Line Trail, officially opened June 21, 2008 in the Sauganash community on Chicago's Northwest Side. It's one mile long, running from Bryn Mawr to Devon near Kostner.

It's a delightful little path, extremely well designed and executed and it gets regular use by locals. If you lived nearby you'd probably find yourself using it several times a week for accessing Bryn Mawr to pedal downtown, for strolling, walking your dog, jogging or helping your kids travel safely around the neighborhood.

The trail is located on an old railroad embankment now owned by ComEd and the City of Chicago is leasing the right-of-way for a dollar a year, says Maria Castaneda, spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Transportation, which helped plan and build the project. It's the city's third rails-to-trails after the Burnham Greenway and the Major Taylor Trail on the Southeast and Southwest Sides, respectively. The Bloomingdale Trail is currently in the works for the Near Northwest Side.

The biggest challenge of building the path was replacing old railroad structures at Rogers and at Peterson with bike-ped bridges, says Castaneda. Since this work involved disrupting the traffic below the bridges it was done during off-peak hours.