Qualla: Moonville Rail-Trail

Moonville Rail-Trail: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ChristopherM, CC BY 2.5. The trail starts where the railroad ended. CSX Transportation abandoned the Marietta and Cincinnati line in stages through the late 1980s, pulling up rails and leaving the right-of-way to whatever came next. What came next was a ten-mile rail-trail that winds through Zaleski State Forest, skirts Lake Hope State Park, and threads two tunnels - the masonry Moonville Tunnel, where the ghosts of a vanished coal town are said to walk, and the timber King's Hollow Tunnel, where the engineering is a curiosity in itself. Cyclists and hikers now use the same dark passages that once moved freight between Marietta and Cincinnati.

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Image: ChristopherM | CC BY 2.5

Moonville Rail-Trail: From M&C to Rail-Trail

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad, built in the mid-1800s, ran across southern Ohio between its two namesake cities. The line was absorbed into the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as its Southwestern Division, then merged into the Chessie System in the 1970s, then into CSX Transpo...

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0

Moonville Rail-Trail: Two Tunnels

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Deerszn, CC BY 4.0. The trail's most distinctive features are its two tunnels, each from a different era of railroad construction. The Moonville Tunnel is the famous one, a stone-and-brick masonry passage in Vinton County that lent its name to the ghost town it once served and which still draws thou...

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Image: Deerszn | CC BY 4.0

Moonville Rail-Trail: Bridges and Stream Crossings

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rail-trails often inherit the bridges of the railroads that preceded them, but the M&C corridor presented a problem: the dismantling crews removed many of the railroad bridges along with the track. The trail surface is gravel and dirt, and many of the stream crossings now require...

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0

Moonville Rail-Trail: An Unfinished Network

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. The current rail-trail runs from Zaleski on the west end to Mineral on the east, but the long-term ambition reaches farther. The west end could eventually link toward Chillicothe, where M&C track remains intact. The east end could extend toward New Marshfield and then to Athens, ...

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0