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The Dunbar segment is the northern two miles of the Sheepskin Trail, a crushed and compacted gravel path that starts beside the Dunbar Historical Society on Bridge Street and follows Dunbar Creek downstream to the Youghiogheny River. It passes the fire hall and the ballfield, crosses the creek twice, and runs past the site of the old Bowest rail yard before meeting the Great Allegheny Passage at the Bowest Bridge. A short spur leads to restored coke ovens. The grade is rail flat with an easy drop toward the river. At the junction, Connellsville is a left turn and Ohiopyle a right. The rest of the Sheepskin lies south, with the Uniontown segment the next finished piece.
Sheepskin Trail: Dunbar
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Sheepskin Trail: Dunbar has about 111 to 155 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 Sheepskin Trail: Dunbar!
In half of past years, color along the Sheepskin Trail: Dunbar peaks October 23 to November 1, typically around October 27. The trail has 49% deciduous coverage, with the majority being red maple, black cherry, sugar maple, yellow-poplar, and northern red oak.
Old B&O railroaders called this line the Sheepskin because its first trains scattered sheep for miles. Iron came before the rails. Isaac Meason lit his Union Furnace on Dunbar Creek around 1793, and Dunbar grew into a furnace and coke town at the foot of Chestnut Ridge. The Fairmont, Morgantown and Pittsburgh Railroad was chartered in 1883 with Baltimore and Ohio money. Its West Virginia line opened in 1894 and reached the state line, where connecting roads ran on to Uniontown and Connellsville. The Baltimore and Ohio built the Pennsylvania miles in the 1890s as its Fairmont, Morgantown and Pittsburgh branch. The branch hauled coal and coke and opened the southern end of the Connellsville Coke Region. By 1915 the B&O ran the whole line as one branch. Passenger trains stopped in 1953. Coke traffic faded, and the corridor passed to CSX, which let it go. Fayette County finished a feasibility study in 1997 and bought the old B&O line from CSX Realty in 2007. The first phase opened in May 2008. In 2010 the county named the National Road Heritage Corridor its development partner for the trail. South Union Township dedicated its paved section in August 2017. The finished trail will run about 34 miles from the Great Allegheny Passage near Dunbar to the Mon River trails at Point Marion. This segment holds the northern end: the two miles from Dunbar down Dunbar Creek past the old Bowest rail yard to the junction with the Great Allegheny Passage.
