Allegheny River Trail: South

This is the short southern segment of the Allegheny River Trail, a detached stretch of about 2.6 miles running from Foxburg south to Parker in Clarion County. It is flat and deeply wooded, tracing the east bank of the Allegheny River on an old railroad grade. The highlight is a graceful bridge over the mouth of the Clarion River where it joins the Allegheny River. Users finish at a trailhead beneath the Parker Bridge. For now, the trail is a simple out and back, disconnected from the longer Franklin to Emlenton trail while trail groups work to close the gaps in between. Groundbreaking of Fox-Hunt Park in Foxburg occurred in May 2026, which will be a very nice gathering point on the trail.

The corridor follows the grade of the Allegheny Valley Railroad, a line pushed north from Kittanning and Pittsburgh toward Buffalo around 1867, just as the region's oil boom began. The railroad became a division of the Pennsylvania Railroad and hauled crude oil, freight, and passengers along the river. At Foxburg the line met the east-west Baltimore and Ohio, whose distinctive double-decker bridge carried trains above and road traffic below across the Allegheny River. That branch closed in 1964 and its rails were removed in the early 1990s. As rail traffic ended, the abandoned corridor along the river between Foxburg and Parker was paved into a smooth asphalt trail, crossing the mouth of the Clarion River and ending at a trailhead beneath the Parker Bridge. The Allegheny River Trail in Clarion County (ARTinCC) now works to develop and manage the corridor, with the goal of closing the gaps between Emlenton, Foxburg, and Parker and eventually extending south to the Armstrong Trail near Upper Hillville, knitting this short segment into a continuous river trail across Venago and Clarion Counties.

• FoxburgMILE 0Directions
• Parker BridgeMILE 2.6Directions

• Pennsylvania Wilds · Down Life's Crazy Road: Foxburg
• Foxburg Tours · Foxburg History
• Wikipedia · Foxburg Bridge (1921)