388hero Someday, We’ll Bike on a Path Across America. But First, Nebraska.

Somewhere near Meadow Grove, Neb., biking on a particularly gusty section of the Cowboy Recreation and Nature Trail, Alex Duryea offered a new way to consider the landscape of wide open cornfields we’d been pedaling through for hours.

“This is Nebraska’s mountains — the wind,” said Mr. Duryea, the recreational trails manager at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.

Cyclists and walkers beyond the 187-mile Cowboy Trail will get themselves to actual mountains one day if the planners of the Great American Rail Trail achieve their goal of establishing a coast-to-coast pathway. Proposed to run more than 3,700 miles from Washington, D.C., to Washington State, the Rail Trail would knit together some of the country’s existing walking and biking paths with new, dedicated trails — along old rail corridors, highway rights of way, or anywhere else where public opinion, government approval and funding can be steered in unison.

Started in 2019 by the nonprofit Rails to Trails Conservancy in partnership with local governments and recreation groups, the Rail Trail is about 55 percent complete. The finished crossing is likely still decades away.

ImageNebraska is both the geographic midpoint of the cross-country trip and a conceptual one: Like the national crossing, the route through the Cornhusker State is just over half complete. Credit...Terry Ratzlaff for The New York Times

In September, I joined a group from the Conservancy, along with Nebraskan allies of the trail, to take stock of where things stand. Nebraska is both the geographic midpoint of the cross-country trip and a conceptual one: Like the national crossing, the route through the Cornhusker State is just over half complete. It includes established paths like the Cowboy Trail, but also gaps that range from long-planned connections awaiting final approval to great blank rectangles.

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