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Friday, June 12, 2015

Browns Creek Bicycle Trail

The last time I caught a trout in Browns Creek was in 2006. I fished a size 16 Pheasant Tail Bead Head into a pool for an hour, and eventually caught what Simpson's folklorists would know as General Sherman, the massive catfish Homer caught in season two while on a couple's retreat with Marge.

The lone brown trout was probably just as surprised as I was to be caught, and I released it. The railroad tracks at that time were remnants of the logging industry that built Stillwater, as is most of the town's architecture and buildings - as recently as 2003 the original buildings that once housed logging mills were still standing, in fact I believe there are still a number of them there now.

After years of contentious land speculating, a group purchased the property, tore out the wooden rail ties and the steel rail lines and voila, a perfectly smooth, gradually descending, (or ascending) bicycle and pedestrian trail was born.

Of the handful of times I have ridden on the Browns Creek Trail, I have found people to be very courteous and respectful of cyclists, and I try as a cyclist to reciprocate that convention with "on your left" or simply slowing whenever an altercation seems imminent.

Here is a Strava route, running from Saint Paul to downtown Stillwater, nearly fifty miles of exclusive bicycle trail, including the newly completed Browns Creek Trail.