Arches Rail Trail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Arches Rail Trail is a 3.0-mile (4.8 km) rail trail from Hillsboro, Illinois to Butler, Illinois in Butler Grove Township in central Montgomery County.[1]
The trail occupies part of what was the Terre Haute & Alton, an 1850s railroad built to connect the state of Indiana with the Mississippi River port of Alton. After a numerous series of mergers and consolidations, the trackage eventually became part of the New York Central system before being completely abandoned in the late 1960s. A three-mile section of the former railroad track was acquired by a local citizen, Conrad Kee, who is credited with saving the right-of-way for future trail use. Montgomery County purchased the linear property from Kee in 2007.[1]