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The Trolley Trail follows the former Northern Electric Street Railway for about two and a half miles between Old State Road in Clarks Summit and South Turnpike Road in Dalton, passing the village of Glenburn on the way. Countryside Conservancy maintains it as the first open section of a planned 14 mile route to Lake Winola. The surface is smooth crushed stone with earthen stretches and short boardwalks, and the grade is a gentle interurban descent toward Dalton along the Ackerly Creek valley. Riders pass under mature hardwoods, cross a small bridge over Ackerly Creek near the Roz Peck Memorial Trailhead, and roll past century old stone cattle crossings that once carried farm animals beneath the trolley line.
Trolley Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Trolley Trail has about 119 to 160 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, biking, running, 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 Trolley Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Trolley Trail peaks October 15 to 26, typically around October 20. The trail has 38% deciduous coverage, with the majority being red maple, sugar maple, white ash, and black cherry.
The Northern Electric Street Railway ran its first trolley from Dalton to Scranton on July 1, 1907. The company had been incorporated in 1904 and began grading in 1906. Its cars ran northwest out of Scranton through Chinchilla, Clarks Summit, Glenburn, and Dalton, then on through Factoryville, Nicholson, and Hop Bottom to Montrose. A branch to Lake Winola opened on Memorial Day in 1908, bringing the system to 49 miles. Power came from the Brookside plant in La Plume. The line carried passengers and freight, and in 1915 it moved more than 2.2 million riders. In 1922 the state finished US Route 11 beside the tracks, and the automobile took the trade. The company, by then known as the Scranton, Montrose and Binghamton Railroad, went into receivership in 1930 and suspended operations in July 1931. The last car ran on September 21, 1932. The grade sat empty for decades, its stone cattle crossings and platform foundations slowly disappearing under hardwoods. Countryside Conservancy, a land trust working in the Tunkhannock Creek watershed, took on the corridor as a 14 mile non-motorized trail from Clarks Summit to Lake Winola. A state grant in 2011 funded the first work, and the Clarks Summit to Dalton section officially opened in 2014. A second section through the Keystone College campus from La Plume to Factoryville followed in 2017. In 2022 an 18 acre donation from The Conservation Fund added land toward closing the gap between the two.
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