A VIEW FROM ...
North Alabama’s Trails
By Laura Stark
If you haven’t yet put Alabama on your travel bingo card, you might give it a go in 2025, as the new “Year of Alabama Trails” designation is generating fresh excitement for the state’s outdoor recreational gems. North Alabama boasts numerous trails that provide access to dense forests, mountainous terrain, and landscapes crisscrossed with creeks and rivers—not to mention vast interconnected trail systems in the state’s two largest cities. Here are just a handful of our favorites in the region.
PHOTOS: This page: Jenn Coleman of Coleman Concierge. Page 26, from top: Bill Segrest, courtesy Goodwyn Mills Cawood; Brandi Horton. Page 27, from top: Brandi Horton; Meg McKinney, courtesy Freshwater Land Trust.
For more inspiration, explore “Alabama’s 25 Must-Tread Trails for 2025” (rtc.li/alabama-year-of-trails), our Rail-Trails: Southeast guidebook (rtc. li/guidebooks) or our national trail-finder website, TrailLink.com™.
No list of Alabama trails would be complete without the state’s first rail-trail, the Chief Ladiga Trail. The 33-mile paved pathway traverses Talladega National Forest and the Appalachian foothills from Anniston to the Georgia border, where it seamlessly joins the Silver Comet Trail, its Hall of Fame partner heading another 62 miles toward Atlanta. Take in the corridor’s history by visiting two restored depots and checking out the rock formations cut
by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad a century ago.
Chief Ladiga Trail
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