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The Clarion-Little Toby Trail is an 18 mile crushed limestone rail trail between Brockway in Jefferson County and Ridgway in Elk County. It follows Little Toby Creek north from Brockway, then joins the Clarion River for the last miles into Ridgway. Most of the route crosses State Game Lands 44, with no road crossings, no services, and no cell signal between the two towns. Signs mark the lumber era ghost towns of Carrier, Vineyard, Shorts Mill, Blue Rock and Mill Haven, and a swinging footbridge crosses Little Toby Creek at Blue Rock. The grade is rail flat apart from one short hill near Ridgway. Trailheads with parking sit in Ridgway, at Croyland, at Jenkins Run and in Brockway.
Clarion-Little Toby Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Clarion-Little Toby Trail has about 105 to 145 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, running, biking, birding, and walking, with May, September, and October the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Clarion-Little Toby Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Clarion-Little Toby Trail peaks October 13 to 21, typically around October 17. The trail has 63% deciduous coverage, with the majority being red maple, black cherry, and northern red oak.
Log rafts ran down Little Toby Creek and the Clarion River from this valley for decades before any train did. The first settlers arrived in 1798, and Ridgway was founded in 1824. With no roads through the forest, the two waterways were the highway, and the early economy ran on log drives and timber rafting to Pittsburgh and even New Orleans. In 1883 the Pennsylvania Railroad built its Ridgway and Clearfield branch up the valley, from Ridgway through Croyland, Blue Rock and Carrier to Brockwayville, now Brockway. The line served the sawmill towns along the creek: Mill Haven, Grove, Shorts Mill, Blue Rock and Ellmont, Vineyard and Carrier. A quarry and rock crusher at Garovi shipped stone from 1905 to 1929. As the timber gave out, the towns faded one by one, and by 1908 Blue Rock and Ellmont were gone. Penn Central ran the last train in 1968. The tracks came up in 1972. Twenty years later, in 1992, George Miller of Brockway and Dave Love of Ridgway founded the Tricounty Rails to Trails Association to turn the 18 mile right of way into a trail, and the first section opened that same year. Volunteers rebuilt the Blue Rock crossing as a swinging footbridge in 1992. The full trail from Ridgway to Brockway was completed in 2003. The association now works to extend the corridor south to Brookville by way of the Five Bridges Trail and east to DuBois by way of the Wolf Run Trail.
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