Why the Katy Trail Starts Here: The Rocheport Ribbon-Cutting That Began It All

Every spring and fall, thousands of cyclists roll through Rocheport on the Katy Trail without necessarily knowing this town has a special claim on it: this is where the whole thing started.

The trail follows the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad — the “Katy” — which stopped running its Machens-to-Sedalia route in 1986, according to [Missouri State Parks](https://mostateparks.com/basic-page/trail-history-katy-trail). Missouri State Parks was able to bank that abandoned corridor for a recreational trail under an amendment to the federal National Trails System Act, but banking a corridor and building a quarter-mile of usable crushed limestone are two different problems, and it took a couple of very committed people to bridge the gap.

That was Edward “Ted” Jones Jr., the St. Louis investment executive, and his wife Pat. Ted got the idea after riding a converted railroad trail in Wisconsin and came home determined to do the same thing with the old Katy line. He and Pat gave $2.2 million to help Missouri State Parks purchase the rail corridor — the gift that turned a legislative long shot into what would become the longest continuous rail-trail in the country, per State Parks.

Construction began in 1987. On April 28, 1990, the first finished section of the Katy Trail opened right here in Rocheport, with more than 1,000 people turning out for the ribbon-cutting alongside Ted and Pat Jones themselves, according to [Magnificent Missouri](https://www.magnificentmissouri.org/a-legacy-of-connection-the-story-behind-the-katy-trail/), the conservation nonprofit that has continued the Joneses’ land-preservation work along the corridor. Everywhere else the trail runs today — 240 miles from Machens to Clinton, with 26 trailheads and a string of restored depots along the way — grew out from that first stretch of track bed here.

The Union Pacific Railroad later donated another 33 miles of corridor from Sedalia toward Clinton in 1991, and further purchases and donations filled in the rest of the route over the years that followed, State Parks says. But none of that changes the plain fact for anyone standing at the Rocheport trailhead: you’re standing at the beginning.

So next time a friend rolls into town asking why Rocheport gets so much bike traffic, you’ve got the actual answer — not just “it’s on the trail,” but “the trail exists because of what happened here in 1990.”