Bike Trails PA. Ghost Town Trail
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Raw file: Ghost Town Trail.gpx (312.6 KB)
My wife, brother and I are bicycle enthusiasts who enjoy riding the ever increasing number of rail / canal trails mostly in the Northeastern US. We also do volunteer work for NOAA by recovering US Coast & Geodetic Survey Benchmarks. We often combine these hobbies while trail riding.
Unlike geocaching, benchmark hunting serves a valuable purpose by providing NOAA with updates on the condition of their 700,000+ benchmarks across the Unites States. Information on Benchmarks is available here: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/.
We have been riding these trails for over 10 years now and I decided to share some of the .GPX files I’ve created. The files were compiled using a variety of resources including:
NOAA - http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/
Garmin’s Mapsource & Basecamp software
USCGS Topographic GPS Map Files. Available free and legal for many States here: http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/
Google Earth & Google Maps
Garmin’s Birds Eye Imagery
Personal Knowledge
Various Internet & Print resources including:
Indiana County Parks Ghost Town Trail Website: http://www.indianacountyparks.org/trails/gtt/gtt.html
Indiana County Parks Hoodlebug Trail Website: http://www.indianacountyparks.org/trails/ht/ht.html
Trans Allegheny Trails Website: http://www.transalleghenytrails.com/trails/ghost-town-trail....
Trail Link’s Ghost Town Trail page: http://www.traillink.com/trail/ghost-town-trail.aspx
Trail Link’s Hoodlebug Trail page: http://www.traillink.com/trail/hoodlebug-trail.aspx
This File is for the Ghost Town and connecting Hoodlebug Trails in West Central Pennsylvania. Together, they provide 45 traffic free miles of smooth gravel and paved surface trail from Ebensburg to the campus of Indiana University. The trails traverse a mix of rural and suburban Pennsylvania countryside in Indiana and Cambria Counties, passing the ruins of several abandoned towns, coal mines and historic iron furnaces.
These .GPX files include tracks for trails, waypoints for significant features along trails, parking areas, bicycle shops along or adjacent to trails, campgrounds and USCGS Benchmarks along or near trails. All waypoints include elevation data for use in plotting trail slope and planning outings.
Anyone interested in Benchmark hunting can obtain detailed data sheets for each mark by going here: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_pid.prl The PID is the waypoint name symbolized by the color coded cube icons. Green= Recovered within the last 10 years. Blue= No recent recovery but set in a massive structure which still exists. Red= Likely missing or reported destroyed.
Free, legal, 24K and 100K topo map downloads for the states with these trails are available here: http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/ Segments of these maps covering the above trails can be loaded into many older handheld GPS receivers with limited memory by using Garmin’s Mapinstall program available here: http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3291
I’ll post more trail files as I update and clean them up.
I always enjoy conversing with fellow bike trail enthusiasts so please feel free to contact me with comments, questions, inclusions or revisions. – Enjoy!
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