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2005 — 2011
The Wabash and Erie Canal Towpath Trail — officially named for the transportation route it follows, and called just the Towpath Trail — runs 5.5 miles from Rockhill Park, where it leaves the Rivergreenway's Yarnell Trail, southwest to the Lutheran Hospital campus. The ground under it is two transport systems deep. The canal came first, in the 1830s–40s (its record is the Story chapters'); in Fort Wayne the canal was later filled in, and this right-of-way saw new life as the route of the interurban passenger line to Huntington, whose record is in the Trains leg. What the trail reuses is the corridor both left behind: the dirt path along the canal where mules towed the boats, and the graded line the interurbans ran on.
The trail was the keystone of the southwest network, because it closed the gap between the Rivergreenway and the Aboite Trails. It was built in phases through the 2000s: in November 2005 Mayor Graham Richard announced the DNR had awarded the City a $150,000 federal grant toward a Towpath portion, in the same season the city planned another mile of the trail; in November 2006 INDOT and the City together awarded $1.5 million to Aboite New Trails — $500,000 city, $1 million state — earmarked first for completing Phase IV of the Towpath, including a pedestrian bridge over West Jefferson Boulevard tying Lutheran's health circuit and the Aboite system to the Rivergreenway. By November 2009 the four-mile stretch from Rockhill Park to the Eagle Marsh wetlands on Engle Road was in finishing touches, and Ritchie counted the endgame in public: once the county and Aboite New Trails finished the last mile and a half, from Engle Road to Lutheran Hospital, "we'll have 49 miles of connected trail and users will be able to go from Aboite to New Haven without leaving the trail." The City dates the Towpath's completion to 2011, and states the result in the same terms: with its completion, southwest trail users were connected with more than 80 miles of interconnected trails across the county, including access to downtown — the figure having grown past Ritchie's 49 because the rest of the network grew with it.
Sources: City of Fort Wayne, Trails and Rivergreenway pages — "Officially called the Wabash and Erie Canal Towpath Trail… 5.5 miles from Rockhill Park to the Lutheran Hospital campus"; "With the completion of the Towpath Trail in 2011, trail users in southwest Fort Wayne are now connected with more than 80 miles of interconnected trails across the county." The Waynedale News, "Mayor Richard's Second Greenway Summit" (7 Dec 2005) — the $150,000 DNR federal grant; the added Towpath mile. The Waynedale News, "Aboite Trails Awarded $1.5 Million" (22 Nov 2006) — INDOT $1 million and City $500,000 to Aboite New Trails; Phase IV of the "historic 4-mile Towpath"; the West Jefferson Boulevard pedestrian bridge; "a 25-mile stretch of linear park between New Haven and County Line Road." The Waynedale News, "Transportation Corridor Evolves With City" (18 Nov 2009) — the four-mile stretch Rockhill Park to Eagle Marsh; "the last mile and a-half of the Towpath from Engle Road to Lutheran Hospital… 49 miles of connected trail," per Ritchie; the corridor's canal and interurban history. TrailLink, "Wabash & Erie Canal Towpath Trail" — 5.5 miles, asphalt, rail-trail category; the canal filled in at Fort Wayne and the right-of-way reused by the interurban to Huntington; opened by the City in 2011.