Texas - Rails-to-Trails Conservancy Seeks Trail Mapping Help!

Greetings,

I’m the Director of Information Technology for Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and we’re conducting a GPS mapping project that could really use your help. We’re mapping all the country’s rail-trails for the first time ever. This data will be freely available to the public on our website TrailLink.com. The help we need from you is easy – all you need is your GPS receiver. We collecting GPS tracklog and specific waypoints for each rail-trail. Please visit http://www.traillink.com/gps.aspx for more detailed information or feel free to email me directly at frederick@railstotrails.org.

Thank you for your help!

Frederick

Okay there is the Katy trail over near Dallas, the Mineral Wells Trail, and the Caprock Canyons trail. Those are all I know of in Texas and I'm not personally familiar with the one near Dallas. Any others?

I'll go for it, myself. There is also the one from Denton south to about Justin. The rule book makes this adventure a sort of survey expedition. Marking surface changes, water fountains and such. Very comprehensive, and a good cause, IMO. I know I would use the maps.

There was one out in East Texas that my son and I went on several years ago, hiking, but it was never fully developed.

There is a little short stretch of the trail at White Rock Lake that is on an old railroad grade, and plans are to extend that trail to the south.

You could pull coordinates for these trails off Yahoo maps or other mapping sites with aerial photos. If you're familiar with the trail, it's easy to pick it out on the aerial shots.

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Please take a look here (http://www.traillink.com/Search.aspx?q=ALL&st=TX) to get an overview of all the open trails in Texas from our database. As you can see, we've only been able to map the Caprock Canyons State Park Trailway in Texas so far so we could really use your help.

Please let me know if you'd be interested in helping out. Email me at frederick@railstotrails.org

Thanks again,
Frederick

See my write-up on the Denton Rails-to-trails here:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=350914

There is a map posted, that plus Yahoo aerial photos and my description should pretty well cover it.

The other route I was thinking of is described in "Hiking and Backpacking Trails of Texas" by Gulf Publishing, as the "East Texas Rails to Trail". It goes south from Tyler. When we hiked it about 6 or 7 years ago, parts were okay, parts of it was liking walking across someone's front yard, then it just sort of petered out at the end, as in having development right over the trail. It may still be legally a trail right-of-way, but I don't know if it's being used at all. A pity, it was a nice place.

Thanks, Stephen. We process incoming GPS data using ortho imagery or aerial photography in ArcGIS 9.2 in order to adjust line accuracy and to ensure that our waypoints are on the correct side of trail, etc. Our image sources are usually TerraServer or USGS but free high-resolution imagery is not always available in remote areas. The imagery in GoogleEarth, YahooMaps, VisualEarth, etc. is getting better all the time due to their increasing fly-overs and we are starting to adjust our QC procedures to include these as well. We plan to add interactive map editing tools to our Traillink GoogleMaps mashup this summer to give trail users to ability to spatially update trails themselves.

In any case, thanks for the info. The map should help out a lot.

Would you be interested in adding your Denton trail review and pictures to our Traillink record? It's a good review and I think the pictures are great as well. Here's the link (http://www.traillink.com/ViewTrail.aspx?AcctID=6017367).

Thanks again,
Frederick