(inspirational music) - [Narrator] The Great Ride: landmarks Along the Trail was made possible by the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation with additional funding from the Maryland Office of Tourism and from these generous supporters.

Thank you.

(bike gears clicking) (lively music) - This has been on my bucket list for many years, so I'm finally getting to do it.

- I always think that any down the bike is a good day.

- [Narrator] It's known as one of the most scenic bike trails anywhere.

- Done this four times.

- [Narrator] And there's more to the Great Allegheny Passage than blue sky and sparkling rivers and cool green corridors.

(train horn toots) There are landmarks along the way, points of interest that tell the stories of what was here first.

- And when you're here, the history's alive.

- All the coal mining, that's always kind of interesting.

- The transportation history.

- [Narrator] The path that once carried trains, now carries cyclists and hikers along a trail dotted with interesting towns, architectural wonders, and compelling history.

- You are never far from the next gem on the trail.

You can just keep riding and you're gonna find that little special moment.

- We started in Pittsburgh.

- [Narrator] Although Point State Park in Pittsburgh is considered the terminus of the GAP trail, for many, it is a place to begin a journey east to mile zero in Cumberland, Maryland.

- Watching the mile markers go by like every five 10 minutes, it's amazing.

- [Cyclist] It's indescribable, it really is.

- [Narrator] So many discoveries await.

Ride along and experience some of the fascinating landmarks along the trail.

(gentle music) - Perfect place.

- People from everywhere recognize this is Pittsburgh's front yard.

- I come here almost every day and I feel happy every day.

- This is the start of the GAP.

This is where the bikers can begin their journey.

(gentle music continues) (light switches clicking) This is the pump house at the Point in Pittsburgh.

We have these three pumps right here.

They control the column pumps, which is the big column in the middle.

We have a a pump over there that controls the peacock, which is the fan effects.

And we have two pumps back there and that's the infinity pumps, which are the waterfall effect that come over the inner ring in the fountain.

(gentle music) It's just flowing water through the dirt and the rocks and whatnot.

(grate clanks) (gentle music continues) The reservoir holds about 250,000 gallons of water and the fountain itself holds about 750,000 gallons, so between the reservoir and the fountain, we're looking at about a million gallons.

(machine buzzing) It just keeps getting recycled.

Every morning I will fill it back up.

You lose about a couple inches because of overspray or evaporation.

(gentle upbeat music) Unfortunately, we have to decline.

I don't just push a button for the most part.

I mean there is a process that you have to go through in order to start it.

There has to be water in the fountain.

(gentle upbeat music) I love it.

I love Pittsburgh and I love that symbol, you know, and this is my baby, my very, very loud baby.

(gentle music) (traffic humming) (upbeat music) - I am Christine Davis.

I'm part of the team that saved this bridge.

I served as an archeologist and historian.

It's amazing walking across this bridge and remembering how the big industry was along here.

- Hot Metal Bridge is an unusual purpose it was used for and it's just cool to see it get preserved in a way that people can enjoy.

- The iron would be molten.

They would dip these huge ladles full of this molten material.

Then you'd ship it across here and you'd dump it.

These molten ladles, if they were moved at all in any way, they would dump into the river and that was not an option.

- Got some beautiful bridges here in Pittsburgh and this really is fantastic.

- [Christine] Pretty amazing to see it now all green and beautiful.

They're seeing Pittsburgh as it was over a century ago.

- From the Hot Metal Bridge you can see beautiful views of downtown as well.

- [Christine] They're pedaling through history.

(upbeat music continues) (eaglettes chirping) (gentle upbeat music) - I can't believe that there's eagles in Pittsburgh again.

It's just amazing.

(gentle upbeat music continues) - These two eagles showed up here 2013 and people just started flocking down here.

It happened at the same time that they opened this section of the trail, so back then there was only a few people here and hundreds were lining up on their bicycles just to see their first glimpse of an eagle in Pittsburgh.

Hi.

- Hi.

- It had been a hundred years since there were eagles in Pittsburgh.

(reflective music) - They're monogamous.

They'll live about 35 years.

Generally, they'll have one to three babies a year and these guys have been very successful.

- People stop and look and they've never seen an eagle in their life and then they come back tomorrow with their camera and their children and you're not gonna have that in other places.

- Because I knew this was the spot, I saw the people here.

I love the outdoors and I love to see the wildlife.

- Have a good ride.

- Okay, thank you so much.

- Hope you get to see 'em again.

Keep your eye to the sky.

You never know what's gonna fly over your head around here.

- I've had 'em fly like 20 feet over my head and it's just astounding.

(people chattering) Eagle up.

- [Birder] Up!

(reflective music continues) - [Cyclist] It sounds silly, but I just love watching them.

I can't get enough.

(bicycle wheels rattling) (gentle upbeat music) - My name's Ron Baraff.

I'm Director of Historic Resources and Facilities for the Rivers of Steel.

We are in the historic pump house and it's the site of the Battle of Homestead in 1892 so this is really one of laborers' most sacred sites.

The purpose of this building, the function of this building was for cooling the steel at 17,000 gallons of water a minute and push it into the structural and plate mills, and then getting the water right back out into the river.

But that's not why it's still here.

It's still here because of what takes place on this site in 1892, the Great Battle of Homestead, and it's here on this site, in this land, that the workers of Homestead stood up for their rights against the Carnegie Steel Company.

It's that last great push in the 19th century for workers' rights.

The great Homestead lockout and strike really is about control.

It's about the control of this mill and control of your workplace.

From the worker's standpoint, this was their mill.

It might have been Carnegie's money, but it was their sweat equity that built it and it was really the goal of the Carnegie Steel Company to break the union.

Once they break the union, then they have complete control over this plant.

It goes back and forth, it becomes very heated, and eventually during the course of the day, shots are fired.

All these people really wanted was equity and fairness in the workplace and a say in how their lives would go.

The pump house is a trailhead.

We, during the course of a week, have hundreds of people through here.

You come through here on a weekend, good luck finding a place to park.

It is crazy busy.

Our goal as an organization with this trail was to make sure that we let people know where they are.

There's so much history here.

There are still some artifacts left.

You have venting stacks from the 45-inch mill.

You've got an armor plate press.

You have a gantry crane.

There's the water tower, the pump house itself.

There's also some artwork, sculpture over there, but right below the active railroad bridge is a an 11-ring medieval labyrinth, the Homestead Labyrinth.

There's also interpretive signage all through here so that people understand the sense of place and they know where they are and they know how historic all of this is.

You know, what happened here changed the world.

(upbeat music) - The GAP trail is a real treasure to the region.

That's something I think it and Kennywood have in common.

They're both unique things that are great for visitors and locals to enjoy and I love the fact that the GAP trail goes right by Kennywood.

It's a unique perspective of kennywood that you're not gonna get anywhere else.

You see Kennywood when you cross the Rankin Bridge, but when you see it on the GAP trail and you're that close and you look up and Phantom's Revenge, the turn is right there.

You know, you see things that you normally just don't see and you won't see from anywhere here in the park.

- I mean, I've biked in some other places like I've biked on the Ghost Town Trails.

Not very often you get to see this with, you know, the old still mill on your left and then Kennywood on your right, so it's definitely unique.

(coaster riders screaming) (coaster riders screaming) (upbeat music) - Part of what makes Kennywood special is the fact that it has existed as long as it has, over 120 years.

This is a trolley park.

It existed because it was built the end of a trolley line.

(upbeat music continues) The history of this park's amazing.

A lot of it has to do with how much from a long time ago is still here, the old mill, the turtle.

That combination of new and old is really what makes Kennywood amazing and unique and coaster enthusiasts like it for that reason.

This place is full of not only great roller coasters, but great roller coasters that you won't find anywhere else.

The Jackrabbit, Thunderbolt, Phantom's Revenge.

These coasters use the terrain of the park.

Western Pennsylvania's naturally hilly terrain right here on the banks of Monongahela River so rather than having to build the coaster up off the ground, the rollercoaster can go down over the terrain.

For example, Thunderbolt and Phantom's Revenge both dive into a ravine, which goes right down near the Gap trail and you can see them from the Gap trail.

- It's pretty cool.

It always makes me think that I should go to Kennywood more often.

(laughs) - The Phantom's Revenge is my favorite steel coaster anywhere on the planet.

There's very few coasters, as many as I've ridden, as many times I've ridden, where I can ride it now 20 years after the first time and go, "Wow, that was amazing," every time I come back.

(bird's chirping) (somber music) (somber music continues) - We protect land for a lot of different reasons, but all of them have to do with ecological benefit or environmental benefit.

This particular property was interesting for a number of reasons.

One is its size.

There's 450 contiguous acres of forest in this valley.

The second thing was it sits in the Dead Man's Run watershed and so you get several different streams feed into Dead Man's Run and then into the Youghiogheny River.

And there were five industrial buildings in this valley and if you look at an old picture, it's hard to imagine the woods and the valley the way it is now with the size of the industrial buildings that were here.

So it started first as a quarry.

Shortly after that, people came in and built a pipe factory and they began manufacturing pipes and bricks.

(somber music continues) Something that's really special about this valley too is that it's a beautiful example of nature reclaiming itself.

We've left part of the ruins a part of that factory here and then we've let nature slowly reclaim it because it tells in each story.

It's a neat story about the history of the site, but it also tells the story about how nature can reclaim a spot given time and left to do it.

(gentle music) There are four or five accounts of various deaths here that create the name Dead Man's Hollow.

- There are all kinds of stories and a lot of people wanna believe there are ghosts here.

(melancholy music) They say the ghosts might come particularly in the autumn when the leaves are down and there's a feeling of melancholy that comes over the hollow.

That's quite possible that that reflects the passing of the vital industry that was once here.

I believe that this is a great example of the cycle of industry.

It started out that this was a forest.

It went to tearing down a forest and building all these industrial sites here, so it's sort of a full cycle of nothing to railroad to bike trail and that's a story that's been repeated throughout the Great Allegheny Passage.

(melancholy music continues) (gravel crunching) (bicycle rattling) (eerie music) - My name is Debbie Pop Gilbert and I'm the Vice President of the Elizabeth Township Historical Society, which has a responsibility of the Dravo Cemetery.

The Dravo Cemetery is located on a very large bend in the Youghiogheny River.

It was originally inhabited for the summertime by Queen Aliquippa and her people.

(eerie music continues) This is an illustration of the Dravo Church here adjacent to the Dravo Cemetery, however, it burned from a spark from a passing railroad engine.

(intense music) There are 76 graves that have been identified.

How many are here is an unknown.

Some say there are 500, some say there are 700.

- Some of the urban legends I've heard that there's a ghost train that runs along the Passage trail and there's also accounts of supposedly a two-headed dog that comes around the cemetery, but I don't know if I believe that.

Whether you're a believer or not, I think it's fun to imagine just the people who lived here back in the past.

- [Debbie] It's amazing the number of people locally who utilize the trail, but what's more awesome is just the people who come from outside the state.

- We were just coming by and noticed the cemetery and it had been on our list of things to see.

It keeps the relationship interesting when we cycle in a new place.

- The cemetery here is certainly dry.

It provides a respite, it has the camping area for overnight stays.

(light music) Why is it important to preserve history?

I think it shows the growth and it shows the fortitude of the people.

- If we could meet them, they would have many stories to tell.

In a way, they're still here with us to this day and you can almost sense their presence.

(bicycles rattling) (gentle music) - West Newton is just a few miles this way and as the locals call it, Buena Vista is down the road just a few miles.

This feature behind me is called the Red Waterfall, also known as Rusty Falls, and for many locals in the area, they know it as Blood Falls.

People from another country or even Washington DC may stop by and say, "Wow, this is amazing.

I've never seen anything like this."

For people that are around here, it's pretty common.

I'm your Youghiogheny River keeper with Mountain Watershed Association.

Our mission is to protect, preserve, and restore the Indian Creek Watershed and Greater Youghiogheny Watershed.

What you're seeing there is an abandoned mine drainage and that means that there is a mine back here that has been abandoned for many years and this is the water that's exiting the mine.

This water has been running orange since the late 1930s and will continue for a very long time.

The reason the water is running orange is that there's iron inside of it and when it reaches the atmosphere, the air, it drops the iron out.

The rocks beneath the water are now stained red and have a silty deposit on them.

- I think it's an eyesore.

People stop here and look at that and they park by that bench and look all the time at this and they think it's pretty.

I don't think they know that it's polluted.

- This water has been tested in the past and it's not especially acidic, it's fairly neutral.

This water exits the mine, runs down the hillside behind me, down the ditch, along the GAP trail, and eventually makes it into the Youghiogheny River.

When this water makes it to the river, you may see some staining or a red plume, but will shortly be mixed in with the rest of the river water.

- Can you imagine how pretty that would be if it was regular water?

- [Eric] Some people may look at this as unsightly and other people may look at it as a reminder of the legacy of coal mining In Pennsylvania.

(birds chirping) - [Ray] Most of the bikers don't realize what happened right here other than a small monument down along the trail.

(somber music) - I do walk the trail frequently, but today will be the first time that I've been down this way and I wanted to stop and take a look.

My name is Earl Thompson and I do have a connection to this part of the trail.

My great-grandfather, Walter Shepherd, was one of the people killed in the Darr Mine explosion.

- Darr Mine Disaster is the worst mind disaster in Pennsylvania history.

My name is Ray Washlaski.

I'm a coal mining historian.

I have studied the history of these mines in Western Pennsylvania for the past 20 some years.

Nobody is positive that all the bodies were recovered from the Darr Mine.

Officially, 239 men died.

Unofficially, that number could be a lot more.

Because of the Darr Mine tragedy, safety regulations in the mines are enforced and mining today is a lot safer than it was in 1907.

- [Earl] It was hard to believe that there was a tragedy of that magnitude that was so local and affected so many families.

- [Ray] Bodies that were recovered from the Darr Mine are buried in various cemeteries throughout this area.

- It's a haunting memory of somebody that I never really got to know.

(gentle music) - I had bought the what is left of banning number two coal mine, which is the ruins, and that's what I've called it, the Ruins Project.

And as an artist, I saw that as an opportunity to create a giant substrate for a mosaic and that's what I've done.

I come from coal, my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather, all mined coal.

That coal that came out of this mine that is now the Ruins Project, built the skyscrapers, it built cities, it fought wars, it did so many things.

This is a slice of time, a slice of history that has been forgotten and it deserves its own story.

I think I was thinking about geology and rocks way before I ever became an artist.

(tool pounding) Most of my material is foraged from right under our feet, sandstone, red dog, shale, Youghiogheny glass, and beer bottles from the river, all very local materials.

Mosaic is a very time-consuming art, very time consuming and cutting every little piece, it takes a long time to cover.

Like this piece took three years.

(upbeat music) This is the Compass Rose for the giant map of the GAP.

This wall is a giant map of the Great Allegheny Passage.

We have all these amazing old coke ovens that are in the shape of beehives, so they actually call them beehives.

So you see the fire and then instead of flames or smoke coming out of the top, we have bees.

I want people to get off the trail and come here because I think they can be illuminated by walking through this door and seeing how a certain kind of art is made and also getting a little slice of real history about this area.

(fiddle music) - It's a coal mining town.

We're in the vernacular a patch.

Coal company bought the property, they built the housing.

You'd have to buy your groceries from the company store.

You bought your clothing for your children from the company store.

You rented your house from the company store.

My name is Clarence Johnson and I've lived and grew up in Whitsett.

We had a school.

It went all the way up to eighth grade.

We had a church, everything was here.

You didn't have to leave the community.

We all played together, you know, we went to school together, we caught the bus together, we had the river in our front yard.

There's all kind of woods.

We all basically hunted, fished, played in the river, swam in the river.

(upbeat country music) You guys gonna ride anytime soon?

- Hopefully as soon as the weather clears up.

Oh, you meet new people every day, you know, it's something different.

- Do you need any water?

- Doesn't get any better, huh?

- Hey.

- People coming from Maryland and going to Pittsburgh and they come through and they see the town and they ask questions about it.

They, "Wow, this is like a little paradise down here."

(water flowing) (upbeat country music) - We all grew up going down to Ohiopyle and floating the yacht.

Ohiopyle really is the heart of the Great Allegheny Passage.

(water rushing) (upbeat banjo music) - We're gonna ride from Ohiopyle to Confluence and we're either gonna go to lunch or we're gonna get an ice cream cone.

There's something here for everybody.

(upbeat banjo music continues) I feel so happy to come here.

It's a great feeling and it's something I look forward to all the time.

(gravel crackling) (bicycle gears clicking) (gentle upbeat country music) - We are in Youghiogheny River Lake.

It's a project designated by the Army Corps of Engineers.

It's federal property and we're in Confluence, Pennsylvania.

Whenever the Federal Government was looking to improve the infrastructure of the United States back in the '20s and '30s, they realized that flood control and flood damage was a huge problem.

(gentle upbeat country music continues) In an effort to mitigate those damages and potential future damages, the Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with creating different flood control reservoirs to ensure that events like Pittsburgh floods and Johnstown floods would not happen again.

What we're standing on right now is a rolled earth dam.

It's a composite of cement, clay and other materials, all rolled into one, and what is being dammed up is the actual Youghiogheny River.

Because it's a flood reservoir, there are natural water level fluctuations, so typically towards the end of the summer, as you're getting into fall, the water level is going to drop severely and revert back to its natural river channel and whenever that happens, you have a bonafide ghost town, essentially, that appears almost out of nowhere out of the mud.

There is the original Somerfield Bridge going across the Yough River.

There is the actual town of Somerfield as well.

You can still make out the building outlines.

You can still see the cobbles that made up the original routes going through the small town.

If you're lucky enough and the water level drops enough, you can actually walk out onto the bridge and walk out over the actual Yough River, but that hasn't happened for some time yet, so you'd have to be lucky.

The views here are incomparable to anything else I've ever seen in Western PA.

It is beautiful to just take a moment to stand in the middle of the dam, look across the reservoir on one side, and then look down into our campground on the other and just to appreciate the beauty of the Yough River Valley.

It's kind of a little pocket of heaven whenever you're biking through that you can pass up very easily, but, you know, if you're on your way through, you should definitely hop off and just take a look.

(gravel crunching) (light music) - It's windy quite a bit, but it's really marvelous to be able to ride on infrastructures rehabilitated for use in cycling.

A crane had fallen and killed five workers instantly.

Two more were seriously injured and one had succumbed to their injuries and died.

And then about a month later, another worker had fallen off trying to pry something loose and had fallen about 70 feet to their death.

It's something that anybody that's traveled through here is familiar with.

As you can see, there'd be no real easy way to get folks from that side of the valley over to this side of the valley without the viaduct.

It is something that you'd always remember riding your bike across this massive bridge, 100 feet in the air with these sweeping views.

It's fabulous.

- [Cyclist] Good morning, good morning.

(gentle upbeat country music) - The Bollman Bridge is on the National Historic Register.

The bridge is a favorite spot for people on the trail.

(upbeat music) We needed a bridge to get bikers across Scratch Hill Road.

(upbeat music continues) Locals in Meyersdale said, "This bridge is important.

Can we move it to the trail?"

We lifted it off the site, put it on a trailer and hauled it there.

Our two big challenges were maintaining the integrity of the structure and ensuring that it would fit in the space.

(train roaring) The bridge's design, the truss structure was considered to be unique from an engineering standpoint.

The ornate metalwork sets it apart from other bridges.

It's something you don't see in bridge design anymore.

(upbeat music continues) It's one of the many treasures on the trail.

(gravel crunching) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat Appalachian music) (upbeat Appalachian music) - The Eastern Continental Divide is the division between two major watersheds in the Eastern United States, one being the Atlantic Ocean, the other, the Gulf of Mexico.

(thoughtful country music) George Washington left his footprint all over Somerset County.

He was involved in some of the early exploration.

(thoughtful country music continues) For the bike trail, the good thing here is just like the railroad days, when you get to this point, no matter which way you're coming, you're going downhill from here.

- This was a big part of today and I'm really looking forward to the downhill after that.

(upbeat country music) (bicycle gears clicking) (upbeat county music) - [Bryan] It's time to open the tunnel.

- It opens up the trail for people to visit.

(upbeat music) (tool banging) (tool banging) - The reason we close the tunnel is to protect the lining, (metal scraping) which is subject to cracking with freeze and thaw cycles all winter.

Heads up.

(upbeat music continues) (train whistling blowing) (train roaring) (intense music) Sandy soil above the tunnel crown was leaking through and leaving a lot of debris at the other end.

In fact, the far end of the tunnel was just filled with dirt and stone.

This was a several-year project to engineer it the right way so that it would last for the future.

- The Big Savage Tunnel's a destination, almost a check on your bucket list of the GAP.

- Yeah, the tunnel's so cool, just going through it, getting to the other end, and then looking back at the other people coming through.

- Big Savage Tunnel is open.

That's the sign of spring.

(bicycle rattling) (gentle country music) (gentle country music continues) - The Mason-Dixon Line is a very significant spot in American history.

It's here because in the 1730s, the ruling families of Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Calverts and the Penns were feuding, doing their own surveys and own claims to where their border should be.

The government back in England said, "It's time to get your act together and settle on a line."

(gentle country music continues) They had to clear a path through the pretty much virgin forest.

The Native Americans who had been made many promises by both sides during that war, found out those promises weren't getting fulfilled and they were actually on the war path as far East as where we are.

(gentle violin music) The Mason-Dixon Line continued as, and still is today, the demarcation line between North and South and the Confederacy and the Union.

(gentle violin music continues) (gravel gently crackling) - Yeah, I'd love to find out why, why this place is there?

What happened?

- The history is a living organism and when you're here, the history's alive.

(train whistle blowing) (gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) - It's meant for cyclists or pedestrians to have an easier way to get up to the depot in Frostburg and to Main Street.

It makes it a little bit longer, but a lot flatter.

(gentle upbeat music) - They're narrow and they're very sharp because you're doubling back and when you double back, you have to go slowly.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) - There's also a great amenities here for a cyclist.

There's water fountains, there is a bicycle repair stand with tools and bathrooms and plenty of parking.

The trail is not steep at all.

It's very easy for just about anyone to do.

Anyone can do it.

(water fountain roaring) (gentle country music) (gentle country music continues) - This is an 1,100-foot cut through Haystack and Wills Mountain.

Over the millions of years, water basically cut through the mountain.

You can see Wills Creek going through here.

It's called a water GAP.

Three mainline railroads, the Baltimore Ohio, the Western Maryland, the Pennsylvania Railroad in Maryland all went through The Narrows, as did a lot of shortline railroads.

In 1832, the national road, the nation's first infrastructure project and interstate highway was rerouted through The Narrows.

(pensive music) To me, the greatest flood that occurred here was a St. Patrick's Day flood of March 17th, 1936.

The rail lines were washed into Wills Creek, 20,000 gallon gasoline tanks.

One of 'em got washed into Wills Creek, went flowing down Wills Creek and kept banging against the Valley Street Bridge.

The first radio station in Cumberland, WTBO, kept broadcasting mornings, "Stay away from the bridge.

The gas tank's gonna explode."

And I have pictures of people walking out there on the bridge waiting for the gas tank to explode.

- And did it?

- No.

I hope when people cycle through The Narrows, they'll think of this as just not a geological phenomena with the cut through the mountains, but also the history.

- It makes you feel insignificant because you are just in these tall cliffs.

You're just not, you're just small in the great scheme of life.

(gravel crunching) (bicycle gears rattling) (gentle violin music) - [Dan] Wow, look at this, a mule.

- This is a depiction of what the canalers were like back the 1800s.

(upbeat fiddle music) (upbeat fiddle music continues) When they turned five or six, they would walk with the mules on the towpath and so it wasn't a very lucrative job.

The canal families, they couldn't really afford shoes sometimes, and so the kids would walk barefooted, and in the winter, it got very cold, and so one way for them to keep their feet warm was by walking through mule feces.

- [Carolyn] Do you know what a mule is?

- Looks like a horse.

- Cross between a horse and a donkey.

- [Cyclist] Come up, come up.

- Mules were preferred because being stubborn like a mule actually had its own benefits because a horse is very loyal and they will work themselves to death, but the mules, they actually got used to those six hour tricks and they would just stop and rest and that was basically the trigger to the canalers that it was time to change them.

And he has a lot of other sculptures that he has created that are well known, the Baltimore Orioles, the legendary baseball players, did some of those sculptures and Camden Yards and Nolan Ryan in Texas.

The towpath that the canalers walk along is now a bike path so people can actually ride from Cumberland down to DC, using the C&O Canal Towpath that the mules once walked on.

This statue is a good representation of interesting times and what it took to help grow America's economy.

- [Dan] We made it!

- [Carolyn] Woo hoo!

(Dan laughs) - [Narrator] This father-daughter team ended their journey where the GAP begins.

- It was a feeling of exhilaration to say we actually did it.

- [Narrator] Next time they'll keep going and ride the C&O Canal Towpath eastward to Washington DC, but like so many others, they'll never forget their journey on the Great Allegheny Passage.

- Been a great time.

- We really love the nature and the history.

- [Narrator] A beautiful scenic ride.

And around every bend, a fascinating landmark.

- Can just see the gem of this is what used to be and this is how people used to live.

- [Dan] And learn things, it's great.

- This is something you have to do, the whole thing.

- The whole trip is an adventure.

It was an unforgettable ride.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] The Great Ride: Landmarks Along the Trail was made possible by the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation, with additional funding from the Maryland Office of Tourism and from these generous supporters.

Thank you.