AUSTINTOWN Sandstone buildings become MetroParks bikeway trailhead

The park bought the buildings from the county for $10.
By IAN HILL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- One-hundred-pound bags of rock salt were once piled high in the tan sandstone building near the corner of Kirk and South Turner roads..
Trains would stop at the building 60 years ago and drop off the salt, which would be used to keep Mahoning County roads free of ice in the winter.
Those trains have since been replaced by bicyclists, roller-bladers, walkers and joggers on the Mill Creek MetroParks bikeway, which runs on the former train tracks site.
The salt bags in the sandstone building are also long gone, replaced by two soda machines. Bike path users stop at the building to buy soda or to use nearby restrooms and water fountains constructed to turn the area into the Kirk Road trailhead for the bike path.
Work on the trailhead is nearly complete, and it is set to be dedicated in an invitation-only ceremony later this month.
The trailhead includes the former salt storage building, a 45-space parking lot, and a second sandstone building that will house picnic tables. The second building, which once served as the Mahoning County engineer's office outpost for the county's northwest section, and the parking lot are located down a hill from the bikeway.
Wooden signs reading "depot" and "departures" hang above benches in the trailhead and serve as a reminder of the area's past.
Resting spot
Kelly Kesterke of Youngstown recently took a break from a bike ride to buy soda at the trailhead. She described the area as wonderful. "It looks really nice," she said.
Austintown resident Sue Gessler also praised the trailhead during a recent ride, and her brother, Don Baker of Baltimore, noted that the trailhead provided needed parking for bikeway users. Baker said he has used the bikeway several times while visiting his sister.
"You don't have to worry about [parking] as in the past, when you had to park on the street," he said.
MetroParks spokeswoman Carol Potter noted that the parking was needed to keep bike path users off busy Kirk Road. Susan Dicken, the park's executive director, added that the trailhead provides bicyclists and pedestrians with a good place to stop and rest as it sits in the middle of the 12-mile bikeway.
"It is an area that obviously lends itself to being an incredible enhancement for the trail," she said.
The buildings that now serve as the heart of the trailhead had stood empty between the mid-1980s and 2001, when the park bought them from the county for $10. Both buildings had been constructed as federal projects: The former salt storage building was built in 1938, and the former county outpost building was built in 1937.
Park officials paid for the construction of the trailhead using $198,200 from federal grants.
Preserving history
Dicken noted that park staff worked with the Ohio Historical Society to ensure that the buildings' historical value was not destroyed.
Park employees cleaned the sandstone and removed the wooden doors and walls in the buildings. Tom Fountaine, park maintenance director, said little of historical value was found when the buildings were emptied.
Fountaine is a former county employee who worked at the outpost. He said the building housed dump trucks and other road equipment, and the area was called Camp Park. Construction materials were stored on the gravel lot that surrounded the building, he added.
The gravel lot is now a grassy yard, and a ramp provides wheelchair access from the former outpost building up the hill to the bikeway.
A flagpole that will be dedicated to Youngstown Police Officer Michael Hartzell also was erected outside the outpost. Hartzell was shot and killed earlier this year.
Dicken noted that in the next few years the trailhead and the bikeway are expected to become part of a bike path system that will run between East Liverpool and Lake Erie in Ashtabula County.
She said that bike paths are set to be built from the north end of the Mill Creek bikeway to Niles and from Kent State University's Trumbull campus north to Ashtabula County.
Mill Creek officials also are hoping to receive federal money they can use to extend the local bikeway 7.5 miles south from its south end at Western Reserve Road.
hill@vindy.com