Twelve miles east of Eldon, Mo, outside the small town of Eugene, is an example of what Brett Dufur dubs a “sleeping beauty” — the Eugene Railroad Tunnel. There is no sign directing visitors to the 300-foot tunnel, he said, which has been hidden away in the woods for 40 years.
The train tunnel was once part of the Rock Island Line, a mighty good line, as the song goes, that connected small towns in mid-Missouri. Soon, the railroad tunnel will funnel bikers riding through the state on the Rock Island Trail, and become the focus of innumerable photos.
Brett is the author of “The Complete Rock Island Trail Guidebook,” which has just been released. Reviewers call it the perfect trail companion, even though the Rock Island Trail itself is not complete. But the author hopes the book will be an incentive to all the small towns along the trail to get on board.
Clinton is the western end of the KATY Trail — it’s a tradition to ring the bell at the trailhead when you start or finish. Even though Clinton is not on the Rock Island Trail, which crosses the KATY Trail in Windsor and goes north to Pleasant Hill, the RIT, when completed, will draw more bikers to Missouri.
As Brett puts it: “More trail benefits everybody.”
Brett grew up in north Kansas City, and was still in college at Mizzou when he started the KATY Trail Guidebook in the early 1990s. He was working at the time on the history of small towns as part of his journalism degree, he said, but everybody kept telling him about the KATY Trail and the need for a guidebook.
His thought: why do you need a guide for a bike trail that follows a railroad bed?
His compromise: to provide bikers with information about the small towns along the route.
“We call it “history with directions,” he said.
It’s been a hit with cyclists, especially those who come from outside the state or from other countries to ride the 240-mile trail, the longest developed rails-to-trail in the country. Brett has just released the 11th edition of the KATY Trail Guidebook, and said he releases a new edition every few years, because the trail keeps evolving and changing. It will never be finished.
“The book requires more maintenance than a boat,” he said.
For the past 30 years, Brett has lived in Rocheport, on the Missouri River and the KATY Trail west of Columbia, Mo. He once had a bed and breakfast for trail riders, and said people who ride the KATY Trail are the nicest guests and the most interesting people he ever met.
He started his own company, Pebble Publishing, to publish his books, including his volume of poetry, “Endless River.” He’s also written the “Katy Trail Nature Guide,” edited “Missouri Conservationist” magazine, and is the author of “The Promise Continues: 75 years of Citizen-Led Conservation in Missouri.”
Brett, whose surname is French, likes to kayak and has a dog, so has a lot in common with early explorers. He has written a book about the most famous, Lewis and Clark. He also has an interest, and an undergraduate degree, in Latin American history, and spent what he calls an “extended jaunt” —a year and half — traveling in Costa Rica and Mexico.
“It taught me the value of a good guidebook in rural country,” he said. “It set me up to come back to Missouri and write a guide to rural landscapes.”
Writing and revising the guidebooks has been a labor of love, he said. He had already put five years in on the Rock Island Trail guide, he said, although not full time. This time, he had help from journalism students and photographers. He sells his books through Pebble Publishing (pebblepublishing.com) and on Amazon.
Cyclists come from all over the world to ride the KATY Trail, and love the landscape, much of which borders the bluffs along the Missouri River. But there are even more “sleeping beauties” — dramatic tunnels and railroad bridges — on the Rock Island Trail, Brett said, which cuts across the Ozarks, crossing the Gasconade and Osage rivers.
“It’s a big story to tell,” he said. “It covers a lot of territory.”
Almost 50 miles of the Rock Island Trail (RIT) from Pleasant Hill, Mo., to Windsor are now open, plus a 13.5 mile stretch from Kansas City in Jackson County. The book also describes ways to navigate the “Greenwood Gap” as the connection between the two sections is called.
Last June, the Rock Island Trail became Missouri’s 93rd state park. The remaining 144 miles of the park corridor is now in various stages of development. The RIT goes through a dozen railroad towns from Benton County to Morgan, Moniteau, Cole, Callaway, Osage, Gasconade and Franklin, ending in Beaufort, southwest of Washington and Dutzow.
When each town completes a stretch of trail and it’s linked up with the others, the KATY and the Rock Island Trail state parks will form a loop of almost 450 miles, the longest rails-to-trails path in the world.
Bicycle trails bring more than an economic boost from tourists seeking services in small towns along the route. The trails also bring hope. When the railroads left, many small towns lost their sense of identity, Brett said, stranding people who grew up there with a bleak view of their town’s future.
With the opening of the Rock Island Trail, even more people will set their vacation sights on Missouri.
“People who ride the KATY Trail are not ‘do it and done,’” he said. “They come back, and are looking for new ways to ride the trail.”
Brett said he loves Clinton, especially its town square, and promotes the town in his guidebook. It’s a place he thinks would make a nice place to retire, if his obsession with writing stories about Missouri’s unique small towns ever fades.
According to the Missouri Archives, the Rock Island Line was one of the earliest railroads to build west from Chicago, and the first to span the Mississippi River. Serving the Midwest for 140 years, the Rock Island advanced the frontier, bringing homesteaders into the West and hauling crops to market.
The folk song, “Rock Island Line,” with its driving rhythms, dates from 1929, and was originally sung by road-work prison gangs in Arkansas.
