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The Coal & Coke Trail runs about five miles between Mount Pleasant and Scottdale in Westmoreland County, on the corridor of a Pennsylvania Railroad branch that once hauled coal and coke out of the Jacobs Creek valley. From Route 31 in Mount Pleasant it heads southwest beside the active Southwest Pennsylvania Railroad, crosses Shupe Run at Bridgeport, passes the Iron Bridge trailhead, and reaches Kendi Park on the edge of Scottdale. The grade is rail flat end to end. The surface is crushed limestone for most of the way, with pavement near Kendi Park and borough streets into Scottdale. Parking and restrooms sit at Willows Park in Mount Pleasant, at the Iron Bridge lot, and at Kendi Park.
Coal & Coke Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Coal & Coke Trail has about 111 to 150 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, birding, biking, running, and walking, with April, May, 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 Coal & Coke Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Coal & Coke Trail peaks October 25 to November 6, typically around October 30. The trail has 23% deciduous coverage, with the majority being black cherry, red maple, sugar maple, yellow-poplar, and northern red oak.
Coke, not coal, made this corridor. The Bessemer steel process of 1859 needed coke by the trainload, and the Connellsville seam under Mount Pleasant and Scottdale made the best coke in the country. Scottdale was laid out and incorporated in 1874, named for Pennsylvania Railroad president Thomas A. Scott. Both the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baltimore and Ohio pushed branch lines through the town in the early 1870s. A Pennsylvania Railroad branch tied Mount Pleasant to Scottdale, and by the early 1900s it was hauling coal and coke from the many mining companies of the Jacobs Creek valley, where Scottdale alone counted tens of thousands of beehive ovens. The ovens went cold through the twentieth century as by-product coke plants took over. The line survived in part: the Southwest Pennsylvania Railroad, a short line built from former Pennsylvania Railroad and Baltimore and Ohio branches, still runs trains beside the first stretch out of Mount Pleasant. Trail work on the disused portion began in the late 1990s, led by volunteers who wanted a recreation link between the two boroughs and a way to show off the area's industrial past. The Coal & Coke Trail opened in 2007. The Coal & Coke Trail Chapter of the Regional Trail Corporation maintains it today, and the Jacobs Creek Multi-Use Trail now carries the route on through Scottdale toward Garfield Park.
Jacobs Creek Multi-Use Trail
