Three Rivers Heritage Trail: South

The South segment of the Three Rivers Heritage Trail begins at the Hot Metal Bridge and follows the south bank of the Monongahela River past South Side Riverfront Park, Color Park, and Station Square to the foot of the Duquesne Incline. It then crosses the Fort Pitt Bridge to Point State Park and runs the downtown north bank of the Allegheny to Lock Wall Marina at the edge of the Strip District. The route is flat and paved, with railroad tracks and Mount Washington close beside the South Side stretch. Beyond the Hot Metal Bridge the Great Allegheny Passage and the Eliza Furnace Trail continue upriver; across the Point the North segment heads up the Allegheny to Millvale.

• The Hot Metal Bridge carried ladle cars of molten iron from the J&L blast furnaces across the Monongahela to the open hearths on the South Side.
• During World War II about 15 percent of America's steelmaking capacity crossed the Hot Metal Bridge, up to 180 tons of iron an hour.
• The bridge reopened to cars on June 23, 2000, with a ceremony honoring former steelworkers, and to bikes and walkers in late 2007.
• The Hot Metal Bridge was inducted into the North America Railway Hall of Fame in 2016.
• At its peak the Jones and Laughlin mill employed more than 42,000 workers; it closed in 1984.
• South Shore Riverfront Park, opened in 2012 beside the Hot Metal Bridge, was built on the mill's old barge dock and displays steel ingots unearthed during construction.
• Station Square occupies 52 acres of the former Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad complex, which Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation began converting to shops in 1976.
• The fountain at Station Square's Bessemer Court is built around a retired Bessemer converter.
• Point State Park covers 36 acres at the meeting of the three rivers and is a National Historic Landmark.
• Lewis and Clark set out on their expedition in 1803 from what is now the northeast corner of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, on this segment's Allegheny bank.

Jones and Laughlin closed its South Side steel works in 1984 after more than 140 years on Pittsburgh's riverfront. The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad terminal of 1897 on the Monongahela's south bank had already become the Station Square shops. Across town, Herr's Island in the Allegheny held cattle stockyards, meatpacking and rendering plants, and metal salvage yards. By the 1980s it all lay abandoned along the water. In 1990 a Riverfront Planning Committee secured state and federal money to open the banks back up. It became Friends of the Riverfront, formally established in 1991. That same year Mayor Sophie Masloff authorized a strip of South Side land for a public trail, and ground was broken on the first stretch between 9th and 18th Streets. Formal work began in 1992 with a 2 million dollar federal grant. Volunteers hauled tons of trash out of the corridor. The trail entered South Side Riverfront Park in 1999. The Hot Metal Bridge, which once carried ladles of molten iron to the South Side mill, reopened for bikes and walkers in 2007. The Monongahela Wharf joined the trail in 2009. Today the trail is a 33 mile National Recreation Trail on both banks of all three rivers and the Pittsburgh end of the Great Allegheny Passage. This South segment holds the first ground the trail ever claimed, the Monongahela's south bank from the Hot Metal Bridge through South Side Riverfront Park and Station Square, then the Allegheny's downtown bank beyond Point State Park.

• Hot Metal BridgeMILE 0Directions
• South Side Riverfront ParkMILE 0.8Directions
• Station SquareMILE 2.7Directions
• Point State ParkMILE 4.2Directions

• Bike It or Hike It · Three Rivers Heritage Trail - Pittsburgh
• Friends of the Riverfront · Three Rivers Heritage Trail
• City of Pittsburgh · Three Rivers Heritage Trail
• Riverlife · Southside Riverfront Park & Trail
• Wikipedia · Three Rivers Heritage Trail
• Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (TrailLink) · Riverfront Resurgence: Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Heritage Trail
• Wikipedia · Hot Metal Bridge
• Riverlife · Pittsburgh's South Shore Riverfront Park has steel history in its DNA
• Riverlife · Washington's Landing
• Wikipedia · Station Square
• Pennsylvania DCNR · Point State Park
• The Allegheny Front · Brownfields to Green Destinations: The History of Pittsburgh's Riverfront Trails