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May 2026

A Trail Through Town: The Hawpatch Trail Comes to Wolcottville

A 17-mile multi-use trail along the old Wabash Railroad corridor will link Wolcottville, Topeka, and Millersburg, with construction expected to begin late 2026

A 17-mile walking and biking trail is coming to Wolcottville, and the project has cleared the biggest hurdle in its path. In November 2025, the nonprofit LaGrange County Trails purchased 114 acres of former Wabash Railroad corridor from Norfolk Southern for $1.1 million, ending roughly five years of negotiations and securing the spine of what will become the Hawpatch Trail. The trail will connect three communities, Wolcottville, Topeka, and Millersburg, along a single continuous route. Total estimated investment across all five phases is approximately $18 million, and the finished trail will be ADA accessible.

The corridor itself is older than most people in town. The Wabash Railroad ran trains through this part of LaGrange County for about ninety years before service ended in the late 1970s. The tracks were pulled up in the 1980s and the right of way has sat largely quiet ever since, a green ribbon of leftover land threading through farms and woodlots between towns. The Hawpatch Trail gives that old rail line a second life as a community greenway. The name itself is older still. "Hawpatch" comes from an area near Topeka, on the southern LaGrange and northern Noble County line, that early settlers described as dense hardwood timber thick with black haw and red haw bushes and hawthorn trees. The trail keeps the name.

Construction is expected to begin in late 2026. The work is being done in five phases. Phases 1 and 2, covering roughly ten miles in and around Topeka, are the foundation and are estimated at $11 million combined. The LaGrange County Community Foundation, which serves as the project's fiscal sponsor, received a $5 million Lilly Endowment grant toward those first phases. More recently, the community met a $225,000 matching challenge that unlocked $450,000 in early development funding. Momentum, by every public measure, is real.

For Wolcottville, the Hawpatch arrives in a region that has been quietly building a trail network for years. The Fishing Line Trail, which connects Wolcottville to Kendallville, runs about two and a half miles south of the new corridor. The Pumpkinvine Nature Trail between Goshen and Shipshewana runs about seven and a half miles to the northwest. When the Hawpatch is finished, residents will have a connected set of routes for cycling, walking, and recreation that reaches well beyond the town limits. Out-of-town riders will also have one more reason to point a car toward LaGrange County for a weekend.

There is a Wolcottville fingerprint on this one. Town Councilman Steve Cords, who also serves on the Wolcottville Historical Society, was named publicly as one of the project's local champions. Steve is the same council member listed on the town's council page, and his involvement is the sort of behind-the-scenes work that residents do not always see but that determines whether projects like this one land at all. The trail is a regional effort, but Wolcottville is not a passenger on it.

What it means for residents is straightforward. Safer routes for biking and walking. A new place to take the kids on a Saturday morning. A regional draw that gives the town one more reason to be on the map. It is also the kind of project that pairs naturally with the work already underway here through the Wolcottville Improvement Committee and WCI, which have both focused on recreation, beautification, and the quiet long game of making the town a better place to live. A trail that runs through town is a fairly tangible piece of that same idea.

Late 2026 is the target for construction to start. Until then, the work is in funding, permitting, and design. Residents who want to follow progress or contribute can do so through LaGrange County Trails, and donations are routed through the Hawpatch Trail Fund at the LaGrange County Community Foundation. The trail is years away from a ribbon cutting, but the route is now in friendly hands, and that is the part that took the longest.