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The Great Shamokin Path is a short, flat rail trail in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. It follows Cowanshannock Creek for about three and a half miles between the NuMine ball field and the Yatesboro trailhead near Rural Valley, on the bed of the abandoned Rural Valley Railroad. The Cowanshannock Creek Watershed Association owns the corridor and links it to two small lakes it built, Devil's Washbasin and White Lake. The surface is packed dirt and old ballast toward the NuMine end and mostly grass toward Yatesboro, so it suits a mountain or hybrid bike better than a road bike. Trees line the creek for much of the way, and the trail ends at the water treatment plant after crossing the creek.
Great Shamokin Path
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Great Shamokin Path has about 112 to 151 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, birding, biking, running, 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 Great Shamokin Path!
In half of past years, color along the Great Shamokin Path peaks October 19 to 30, typically around October 24. The trail has 43% deciduous coverage, with the majority being red maple, black cherry, and northern red oak.
The Rural Valley Railroad laid its track up the Cowanshannock Creek valley to reach the coal towns the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company was building there. The valley already carried an old route. The Great Shamokin Path, a Native American trail, linked the Susquehanna River basin with Kittanning on the Allegheny, and the rail trail borrows its name. Around 1900 the coal company bought farmland and built Yatesboro as a company town. NuMine and Margaret followed as mining camps along the same line. The company towns changed hands in 1947, when Rochester and Pittsburgh sold seventeen of them, Yatesboro, NuMine, and Margaret among them. The railroad faded with the mines. In 1952 the Baltimore and Ohio filed to abandon two miles between NuMine Branch Junction and Margaret. In 1973 the Allegheny and Western Railway applied to abandon the remaining line between Echo and Margaret. The Cowanshannock Creek Watershed Association formed in 1980 to clean up the creek, and it bought the abandoned right-of-way. The trail was developed in the 1980s, the same decade the association built Devil's Washbasin in 1986 and White Lake in 1988 as lakes to improve water quality. Today the corridor is a long, narrow strip of woodland between the two lakes, kept by the same volunteer group.
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