Fall Creek Greenway Trail Gets Bit Longer

New bridge over Fall Creek

It's common for cities to place multiuse trails alongside waterways – I rode many miles along the Platte River and its tributaries when I lived in Denver twenty-five (sigh) years ago; and even bike-hostile Houston boasts trails beside White, Bray's, and and Buffalo Bayous. Indy may be far behind cities like Minneapolis and Tucson, but (thanks to federal grants) we're catching up. In the past few years, a series of Fall Creek Greenway Trail extensions had reached the point where Fall Creek Boulevard disappears into Burdsall and the Creek bends sharply south toward its confluence with White River.

Within the past weeks, our fair city quietly finished another two or so miles of the trail, extending a paved surface (protected by a concrete curb) from where Burdsall crosses the canal to the intersection of 10th and Indiana. The construction includes a spanking new bridge across the creek near 18th Street and a crossing (with pedestrian walk light) at Aqueduct and 16th Streets.

Tried the Big 4 Rail Trail Yet?

Strava knows where the trail is!

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a line on the Google Maps "biking" layer that I'd not noticed before. If you've read this blog before, though, you know the folks at Google can't be trusted when it comes to that layer; but I figured what the heck: I'd check it out. That line ran from Lebanon to Thorntown, a distance of about ten miles. Google had even given the line a label - "Farm Heritage Trail" - and told me it was a dirt trail. FWIW, Strava knows it's there (see left)...

A little research disproved most of what GoogleMaps said: first, the trail runs from Lebanon to Colfax, an additional six miles; second, the trail is paved for (almost) all of its length; and third, the name of the trail is now the Big 4 trail. And you wondered why I didn't trust what I saw on the map...