During a ribbon cutting Wednesday at the recently installed Nanty Glo Park and Pool trailhead, more than 100 Cambria County officials and residents gathered to celebrate the trail’s completion and reminisce on the long path it took to get to this point.

Caytlin Lusk, Cambria County Conservation and Recreation Authority’s assistant executive director, said the Ghost Town Trail’s original 12-mile portion between Dilltown and Nanty Glo opened in 1994, meaning it took 32 years of vision, perseverance, partnership and hard work by more people than officials could ever fully name to build the 54-mile trail system that exists today, connecting Cambria and Indiana counties.

“Every grant written, every bridge built, every mile added since then brought us to this day,” Lusk said. “None of this happened overnight, and none of it happened alone.”

Cambria County Conservation and Recreation Authority Cliff Kitner speaks about the completion of the Ghost Town Trail’s C&I Extension, which creates the second longest rail trail loop in the United States. Mirror photo by Matt Churella

Although the trail officially opened in 1994, its story began in 1991 when the Kovalchick Salvage Co. of Indiana donated 16 miles of the former Ebensburg and Black Lick Railroad corridor to Indiana County, Lusk said, adding the Cambria and Indiana Railroad donated an additional four miles known as the Rexis Branch along the C&I Extension in 1993.

Additional segments were added over the years as funding became available, and now, with the final section complete, the loop is closed, Lusk said.

Several key partners who helped make the vision a reality over the years spoke during the event, including Laurie Lafontaine, Dee Columbus and Jerry Brant.

Lafontaine, the C&I Trail Council’s vice president, is considered by many to be the “mother of the Ghost Town Trail,” according to Lusk.

In the late 1980s, Lafontaine started a grassroots effort to establish a rail-trail in Indiana County.

Cambria County officials cut the ribbon marking the completion of the Ghost Town Trail's C&I Extension, which has created a 32-mile continuous loop of rail trail. Mirror photo by Matt Churella

Lafontaine met with the Kovalchick Salvage Co. officials, who were interested in donating an abandoned corridor for outdoor recreation. She then contacted Ed Patterson, the director of Indiana County Parks & Trails, who partnered with her to establish the Ghost Town Trail.

Since part of the trail’s corridor was situated in Cambria County,

Lafontaine and Patterson needed someone from the county to join their partnership. The county commissioners at the time had no interest in developing the trail, so they turned to the Northern Cambria Community Development Corp., then led by Brant, for help.

When the Cambria County Conservation and Recreation Authority was established, the corporation gave its portion of the trail to the authority, who took over ownership and maintenance of the trail, Brant said.

Columbus, the authority’s first executive director, was willing to take the first step toward building the trail system, Lusk said.

“To be here today to witness the completion of the looping trail is truly amazing,” Columbus said.

Cliff Kitner, who took over as the authority’s executive director in 2015 when Columbus retired, said it’s an accomplishment that couldn’t have happened without the people who started the journey before him.

For Kitner and Lusk, completing the loop “feels like another day in the office.”

“It’s part of what we do,” Lusk said. “We build trails. That’s why our organization exists.”

Kitner noted he and his staff can finally say their three favorite words: “We did it.”

But their work is far from over, as Brant noted there are other trails to build in the county.

“This is my challenge to you,” Brant said. “We need to build a trail to Prince Gallitzin State Park. Not five years from now, not 10 years from now. Now. It needs to happen.”

“We’re working on that,” Lusk said in response.

Other guest speakers included Cambria County commissioners Scott Hunt, Keith Rager and Tom Chernisky; PennDOT District 9 Executive Vince Greenland; Roger Rummel of the Department of Environmental Protection’s bureau of abandoned mine reclamation; Tom Sexton, the Rails to Trails Conservancy northeast regional office director; Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn; and Tom Kakabar, the recreation authority’s board chairman.

During her speech, Dillweed Bed and Breakfast owner Kyra Gilmore said trails don’t just connect communities, they build economies. Visitors from 42 states and nine different countries have made their way to Dilltown to visit her business because of the Ghost Town Trail, she said.

“Never take for granted the jewel that this particular trail is, and this loop is going to propel it even further,” Gilmore said.

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520.