continued here...Canandaigua woman works to turn rails into trails
It started with the simple desire to be outdoors with her children. But it grew into the fight of Betsy Russell's life — a labor of love that at times was much more laborious and much less lovely than she would have imagined.
Betsy, a self-proclaimed "country girl" from Dunkirk, Chautauqua County, met her husband, Greg, while living in Wisconsin, where they discovered an extensive "rails to trails" system of old rail beds converted for recreation. By the time they had moved to Seattle, they were out hiking and biking with their son and daughter on a regular basis.
"We got used to using the 'rails to trails' with our kids, so when we moved to Canandaigua, we looked for them," Russell says.
But the only rail trail she could find was the Outlet Trail at Penn Yan. And she wondered why. There were certainly plenty of old train tracks around. The search was on.
"Greg and I got out the New York State Gazetteer with the rail lines and went out driving," she recalls of that initial exploration back in 1992. "We found an old railroad track with a 'for sale' sign on it, barely visible." Calling the number, she found out that Penn Central was selling off property across several states. Holdings in our area were to be auctioned within just a year or two.
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