The Little Miami Scenic Trail. one of the county’s original “rail to trail” projects, has never been more vibrant. But it and others are currently under threat from political forces.

You might not know that the Little Miami Scenic Trail, which wends across five counties from Springfield, OH, to Cincinnati, is the nation’s fourth longest paved walking and biking trail. And you might not know there’s a 486-foot elevation drop along its 78 mostly wooded miles along the grade of an early Ohio steam railroad that followed its namesake river.

We might never have known the Little Miami Scenic Trail (LMST) at all. In the 1970s and ’80s, an era of rail consolidation that left this and thousands of other railroad lines fallow, the conservation organization known today as the Little Miami Conservancy spearheaded a campaign to secure federal funding for this early “rail-trail.”

The organization brought a Federal Bureau of Outdoor Recreation leader to Ohio for a helicopter ride and canoe trip along the river—and coaxed $1 million out of $5 million budgeted federally for the newly born Rails to Trails initiative. The bipartisan Ohio General Assembly approved a $1 million match, and in 1984, the first 13.5 miles of asphalt were laid…