Cheektowaga Historic Rail Trail (Cheektowaga, NY)

Cheektowaga Rail Trail near Interstate I-90

Cheektowaga Rail Trail is a 2.2-mile asphalt trail paralleling an active Norfolk Southern rail line in the center of a major suburb of Buffalo. Walking on the trail one feels Isolated in an industrial landscape, but redwing blackbirds calling reminds me that nature is never far away. The trail offers view of the backyards of working-class houses, a few with aboveground swimming pools and waiting for warmer weather. I momentarily returned to a pastime of my youth, scanning boxcars to find interesting and obscure names, like the Kansas City Southern de México. It is the unseen movement of goods and materials by rail that is fascinating.

It is one of those gray days when calendar feels like a joke. The temperature is barely above freezing, 34°F, and all along the walk I could hear freezing rain hitting dead leaves.  The walk felt much more like November than mid-April. At one point I thought to myself that I wished it would warm up but then, I reasoned, the precipitation would not be frozen, and I would be cold and wet. Other than a few hardy souls walking their dogs, I saw no one else on the trail.

I found it a little disconcerting that a quarter of a mile into my walk, a posted sign suggested that walks should be safe and walk with a friend. It is the first time I have ever seen such a sign on a rail trail, although I realize the potential danger for some walkers. Nonetheless, there were parts of the trail that were remote and potentially perilous. 

Abandoned House at 16 Strawn Avenue

As my hands warmed up, the walk became much more tolerable. The path goes beneath the I-90 and Harlem Road, bother of which carry a great deal of traffic. After a mile-and-three-quarters, the trail begins to move away from the railroad yard and wedged between the trail and trains is a junkyard with thousands of vehicles. As the asphalt path is only separated this vast junkyard by a dirty, polluted creek and a few scrub bushes. Trash and car parts littered the far side of the creek. I watch as several people roamed the abandoned cars, many of which looked like they were melting into a pool of rusted metal. Do sites like this ever recover? Is this a place, at some point in the future, where trees will grow, and birds and animals inhabit? It is difficult to imagine that. At the end of the trail, which spills into Strawn Avenue, an abandon house tells of better times. 

junkyard

On my return trip the frozen precipitation was hitting me in the face. Although it stings sometimes, there is something invigorating about the sensation. The precipitation was heavier, but it was difficult to properly name: rain, snow or freezing rain. My fleece jacket was covered with small piece of ice, but I was not cold. I saw a man working outside in the Erie County Water Authority compound in a high viz jacket. He watched me walk, he gave an appreciative wave that I returned. 

Signs along rail trails usually provide interesting information that is relevant to the trail or area. The area known as Cheektowaga, “land of crabapples” in the Seneca language, incorporated the former village of Forks, where the railyard was currently located. A sign at the trailhead offered a bizarre story from the town’s local history. Within in sight of the trailhead is the remnants of the largest coal trestle ever built in the United States, built in the 1880s. A fire destroyed the trestle in the 1920s, but more salaciously, a love triangle was rumored to be at the heart of its demise. The wife of the owner of the trestle had fallen in love with one of his employees. According to legend the lovers schemed to kill the husband by removing pins that held his office above structure. The resulting collapse killed the owner but ruptured the gas pipes that killed the lovers as well. The sign reports that, “the bodies were never recovered and many tales of strange happenings at the sight of the trestle have continued to circulate over the years.”

Evangelical Church Home of Forks, NY

One can imagine that the area was once a busy area, filled with workers taking goods and materials to and from the railroad lines. Today, a few buildings and remnants of those industrial times are left. Primarily there are two major thoroughfares that run through the area without much reason to stop. An abandoned brick building caught my eye as I was having a look around. On the backslide, well hidden from the view of most, painted on the brick reveals that it was once the Evangelical Church Home of Forks, New York. Many of the people there will have spent their final years watching as the town and world they knew slowly disappeared. Their stories and memories have vanished as well.