Leaving a trail behind: David Burwell has changed the landscape of trails forever.

Twenty years ago, the idea of a coast-to-coast trail network was unthinkable. Not only was there the community perception that trails were small sections of pathways hidden in local parks, but to consider them alternative means of transportation was almost laughable. Since when do people forego the sanctity of a machine in favor of nature?

Since David Burwell discovered a way to use the millions of miles of railway corridors abandoned by the bankrupt railroad industry and transform them into multi-use trails.

When Burwell was a 20-something environmental lawyer working for the National Wildlife Foundation in the 1970s, he was challenged to find a reason to keep the railroad companies from selling 130 million acres granted by the federal government. His problem was that the amount of property--equal to the combined land of New England, New York and half of Pennsylvania--was too large to be bought for preservation reasons; and there were too many property rights issues intermingled in the corridors to allow the federal government to lapse the land grants.

Burwell instead suggested the idea of rail banking, where railroad companies would be given the option of storing their corridors for future rail use. This would relieve them of paying property taxes because the land would be held in perpetuity by the federal government until such time, if ever, the railroad company would return. "If they railbank them, and work with us, then they can take out the tracks and the pipes, they do eliminate their liability and they can always get it back ... so it became a very elegant strategy," he says during an interview at his home in Maryland.

Burwell formed a committee, with members such as NRPA Public Policy Director Barry Tindall, to advocate for the idea in Congress. With help from Ohio congressmen John Seiberling, rail banking language was added to the National Trails System Act before it passed in 1983. Burwell and his committee then created the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy in 1985. Soon after, Rails-to-Trails embarked on its mission to protect and develop rail corridors for public use.

Burwell's documentation of his efforts is held in two oversized, bound scrapbooks. Combing through the pages, Burwell's demeanor changes from proper to passionate.

And that passion has paid off. In the 15 years he spent as the conservancy's executive director, Burwell successfully defended rail banking to the U. S. Supreme Court in 1990, guaranteeing the future of trail development on rail corridors. "If there's one thing that I'm proud of, is we've established the legal structure that says you can rail bank; the public has the right to preserve these corridors," Burwell says.

That same year, he founded a "loser's coalition" of like-minded organizations who were unsuccessfully lobbying Congress for federal funding. This group eventually became the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which helped secure 10 percent of a Transportation Enhancements budget for the creation of bike and pedestrian trails. From 1992 to 2003, the alternative transportation trail network has received $6.1 billion in federal funding. And this year, Rails-to-Trails (RTC) is celebrating 15,000 miles of developed trails.

"His work through RTC pushed the trail movement into the big leagues," says Peter Harnik, one of the founding members of the non-profit group and the first person on staff. "The force of his personality and the sense of building a cadre of financial and political support hasn't really been seen in the trails movement."

In 2001, Burwell left RTC to continue paving the way for the trail movement. He was a founding member of Smart Growth America, a group devoted to building livable communities where people can reside, work and play within their neighborhoods. He also continues to work in transportation policy, furthering his goal that trails should serve as alter native means of transportation.

"The future of the trails movement is directly aligned with the future of recreation and parks," Burwell says. "It's the recreation and park agencies who accept these corridors and manage them and develop them."