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The Houtzdale Line Trail follows a former Pennsylvania Railroad coal branch across the upland of the Moshannon Valley in southern Clearfield County. It runs about nine and a half miles from the Smoke Run trailhead near the Muddy Run bridge, past on street parking in Ramey, through the borough of Houtzdale, to a road crossing west of Osceola Mills. The middle stretch is graded crushed stone with mileposts; the outer ends are cinders and ballast that can be rutted and rough. Expect scrubby former mine land and hedgerows on the Osceola Mills side, woods and small streams toward Smoke Run, and wetlands along Beaver Run between them. Grades are gentle rail grade throughout.
Houtzdale Line Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Houtzdale Line Trail has about 108 to 147 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 Houtzdale Line Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Houtzdale Line Trail peaks October 13 to 24, typically around October 18. The trail has 43% deciduous coverage, with the majority being red maple, black cherry, northern red oak, and bigtooth aspen.
President Benjamin Harrison rode this line in September 1893 to see the Moshannon coal field and stopped to speak to a crowd at Houtzdale. The Pennsylvania Railroad had started building toward the valley in 1860 to reach timber and coal, and its rails arrived in this section around 1870. Locals knew the branch as the Moshannon, or the Mills Branch. It hauled bituminous coal from the mines around Osceola Mills, Houtzdale, and Ramey out to industrial centers, and the valley boomed once that haul became cheap. Houtzdale itself rose almost overnight on the coal and railroad trade. It was laid out in 1870 on land owned by Dr. Daniel Houtz, incorporated as a borough in 1872, and served as the hub for rails pushing west to Ramey and Madera. By 1890 the town held more than two thousand people. The mines faded through the twentieth century, and the branch passed to Conrail, which abandoned it in the early 1990s. In 1994 the corridor was bought from Conrail to keep it in public hands as a multi use path. The trail was graded, compacted, and marked with mileposts, with nearly eight miles of improved surface between the Muddy Run bridge at Smoke Run and the road crossing west of Osceola Mills. The National Recreation Trails program certified the Houtzdale Line Trail in June 2003. Its outer ends remain rougher cinder and ballast, and remnants of the coal industry still show along the way.
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