The Proposed Corridor of Discovery Trail in Montana
If they build it, I will come!
The Corridor of Discovery is merely a good idea, not a trail. It’s a 94-mile, unused rail line between Great Falls and Helena on the east slope of the Continental Divide in central Montana. The rails haven’t had a train on them in about five years, and many Montanans now want to turn it into a tourism dollar magnet, a paved, non-motorized recreation trail, similar to the much-ballyhooed Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes in northern Idaho.
They say wealth follows beauty, which is what happened in Idaho, but the Montana route has plenty of potential wealth, too. From north to south, it meanders along a Mecca of fly casters — the Missouri River — for half its length, then along Little Prickly Pear Creek and through red-stoned Wolf Creek Canyon before dropping into the Helena Valley along Silver Creek to Helena. Lewis and Clark followed much of this route on their way West; hence the name.
