Sunday July 20th 2025 - Genessee Greway trail near West Rush NY - 4 miles,almost no elevation change

This hike was from a different starting point than another hike we did previously, the Erie-Attica trail but it connected back to the far point of that trail.  I didn't have a published guide for finding this starting point but I looked closely at Alltrails maps and it looked like there was a trailhead for something labeled 'Genessee Valley Greenway State Park' which I think, technically, is the entire 90 mile trail but I wasn't sure if maybe there was a special facility at the spot Alltrails shows...

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 In hindsight I don't think there is anything special where that map marking is but it was still a rewarding adventure.  There was a small parking area along W River road.  From there we headed south along the trail.  A lot of it was very typical generic greenway stuff..

 

 

But later it got a lot more interesting with 2 good sized bridges. One of them was fascinating because the level we walked on (which is level with the trailbed) was actually the lower level back when trains used it. A bit earlier on the trail we passed a very substantial tall concrete structure which looked clearly like a bridge support.  The odd thing was that there didn't appear to be any other pillars nearby and then there was this bridge not far away but the slope to get from the pillars to the bridge would have been very steep.  It turns out that the railroad built a towering causeway which took the tracks high over the Genessee River but also 2 other railroads that were already in place.  That's why the bridge clearly had supports for tracks far over our heads.  I can only imagine how much effort and material the causeway took to build and operate.  An interpretive sign at the junction of the greenway and the Lehigh Valley trail (another greenway which actually runs near our house, some 20 miles away from where we were) explained the structures purpose and said that it was in use until the late 1970's I believe.

I'm always impressed and somewhat baffled by the number of railroads that used to exist in this area and the amount of infrastructure they built.

These features made this otherwise potentially boring and certainly ordinary walk very interesting.  The shorter bridge that goes over a section of wetland from a Genessee River tributary was actually astonishingly high. The picture with me looking over a railing was me looking down on a lot of full sized trees that were short enough that they didn't come up higher than the bridge deck.