Trestle Trail

About this trail

The Trestle Trail is the westernmost segment of Rhode Island's Washington Secondary Rail Trail, a 19-mile corridor running west to east through the Trestle Trail, Trestle Trail East, Coventry Greenway, West Warwick Greenway, Warwick Greenway and Cranston Bike Path. It lies in western Coventry, Rhode Island, not in Connecticut; the only Connecticut element in the sources is an access point at Route 14A in Sterling, where the corridor meets the state line. The route follows the Washington Secondary Line, built in the 1840s by the Hartford, Providence and Fishkill Railroad, later operated by the New Haven Railroad as the Willimantic Branch; the Providence and Worcester Railroad acquired it from Conrail in 1982, and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM) later took ownership of the western Coventry section from Narragansett Electric. The whole corridor is a designated section of the East Coast Greenway.

In Rhode Island the Coventry section was rehabilitated and extended by nearly five miles (Trestle Trail East) in 2014, when the paved segment opened. The undeveloped western portion from the Moosup River bridge to the Route 14A access area in Sterling, Connecticut, was the subject of a 2018-2020 RIDOT and RIDEM project that rehabilitated two bridges and replaced culverts, with the trail top left as compacted gravel; paving of that stretch was planned as a separate project. Reaching the Connecticut border was still described as planned rather than complete, with the full build-out expected to bring the corridor to 24 miles.

Across the state line the same railbed continues as Connecticut's Moosup Valley State Park Trail, a 5.8-mile CT DEEP trail through Sterling and Plainfield to Main Street in Moosup village, on the former New Haven Railroad line that operated from 1898 to 1968. That trail, not the Trestle Trail, is the Connecticut side of this route.

Sources checked Oct 12, 2026 · CC BY 4.0