The Trail State: A New Documentary on the Katy Trail

The Trail State, a new feature documentary about the Katy Trail from the nonprofit Magnificent Missouri, has been screening around the state this fall, and its trailer is below.

Who made it

The film was Dan Burkhardt’s idea, according to Magnificent Missouri’s page for the film. Burkhardt is a co-founder of Magnificent Missouri and the film’s executive producer, and he was a friend and partner of Ted Jones, who started the Katy Trail. An earlier film about the trail came out in 1998. “After almost 30 years, we decided that it needed another look,” Burkhardt says on the page.

Chris Ryan of Once Films directed it as part of the Filmanthropic initiative from Once Films and STL.org, which makes long documentaries about the people and places of the region. Burkhardt says he gave Ryan a roadmap of the spots along the trail he found interesting, and the two worked on the film for the past year.

Where it has shown

Magnificent Missouri lists these screenings:

• Sept. 11 at the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia.
• Sept. 22 at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis.
• Oct. 2 at the Peoples Theater in Pleasant Hill, the night before the Jones Bridge ribbon cutting on Oct. 3.
• Oct. 12 on Nine PBS.
• Oct. 17 at the Historic Walt Theatre in New Haven.

The page does not list any later showings or a streaming date yet. We’ll add them here if they are announced.

Why it matters here

Rocheport has a voice in the film. Brett Dufur, a former mayor of Rocheport and the author of The Complete Katy Trail Guidebook, is among the people heard in The Trail State. In the film’s trailer, he remembers the trail’s first years: “Sometimes people ask what the early days of the Katy Trail were like, and I’ll tell you, it was a honeymoon period straight out of the gates.” Later in the trailer he says, “Immersing ourselves in nature on a trail like this is probably better than any prescription you could get from a doctor.”

The Katy Trail’s story starts here. The first stretch Missouri opened ran out of Rocheport, as we told in The Gift That Started at Rocheport. If you’re planning a ride, see our guide to parking and shuttles.

The next trail: Rock Island

The film also looks ahead. “Now there’s talk of this Rock Island Trail. The question is, can lightning strike twice in Missouri?” Dufur says in the trailer.

He means Rock Island Trail State Park. Its open stretch runs 47.5 miles from Pleasant Hill to Windsor, according to Missouri State Parks, and the park takes in what was once the Rock Island Spur of Katy Trail State Park. Another 144 miles of old railroad corridor, from Windsor east to Beaufort, stays closed until it is developed.

That eastern stretch is opening a piece at a time. The Friends of Rock Island Trail State Park marked a new section at Owensville with a First Day Hike on Jan. 1, and cut the ribbon on a new Gasconade County segment on May 30. In August the group reported that 74 landowners along the corridor had received about $1.95 million in a federal settlement over the land, with 17 cases headed to trial. Supporters say a finished Rock Island Trail would join the Katy Trail in a loop of about 450 miles.

By Roman Clarkson