Current Status
Three Notched Trail…
a community dream steps closer to reality
By Mark Lorenzoni
Central Virginia has been known for years as one of the healthiest and most active communities in the country. And no wonder: literally thousands of our neighbors walk, run and bike on a regular basis. At any given time throughout the day, countless numbers of them can be seen on the county roads, city sidewalks, trails and our county parks.
Over the past fifty years I personally have been one of those exercisers, first as a long distance runner and now as an avid daily walker and hiker. And I also, as a longtime volunteer community running coach and race organizer, have overseen the utilization of our roads and sidewalks by thousands of my athletes and race participants.
I absolutely love the culture, collegiality and camaraderie that brings all of these folks together at these public places. However, there is something glaring that has been sorely missing from this beautiful outdoor community picture: long, uninterrupted, car-free, wide and smooth surfaced trails that run over many scenic and quiet miles, connecting neighborhoods, communities and villages along the way.
My wife Cynthia, who has been an avid daily runner for close to six decades, and I met on a Parks and Recreation field bus trip, way back in 1979, when we were students at Michigan State University. One of the highlights of that memorable trip was seeing, up close, so many examples of urban and rural greenbelts throughout the upper Midwest. From the long and wide crushed gravel path at Sleeping Bear Dunes along the Great Lake in Northern Michigan to the seemingly unending wide paved path looping around the Twin Cities in Hennepin County, we were treated to countless miles of public places to walk, run and bike…and the big bonus: all were auto free every step of the way!
We marveled at these amazing long distance public paths and were even more jazzed by our professor’s prophetic words, after touring just a small section of the lakeshore path in Chicago: “This is the dawn of public paths, as they’re the future of recreation in our country. By the end of this century almost every community, whether rural or urban, will have long distance connector paths like these.”
But when we arrived in Charlottesville the following year we were surprised, especially since it was an active and vibrant university community, to find not a single mile of auto-free public path. In the years since then, we have been actively involved in supporting the creation of wonderful public venues to exercise on foot and bicycle, like the Saunders Monticello Trail, the Rivanna Trails Foundation (RTF’s) twenty mile loop and the two mile path along the Rivanna at Riverview Park. Seeing these beautiful venues built and witnessing how incredibly popular they have become has been encouraging and exciting…but still no long distance public connector path, like the ones that we had been awed by almost fifty years ago on our midwestern college field trip…that is, until now!
Several years ago, when we first heard about the possibility of a wide public path, running from Charlottesville to the Blue Ridge Tunnel in Afton, our entire family jumped for joy. Even though it was only a pipe dream at that point, the Three Notched Trail gave our family, who loves to exercise on foot outdoors, and all of our fellow community walkers, hikers, runners and cyclists hope that someday Central Virginia would finally have a long distance path…one that would be safe and accessible to thousands of people, both local and visitors and, as a bonus, connect the twenty four miles (yes, 24 miles!) spanning Charlottesville to Ivy, Crozet and finally Afton…and, maybe someday, even beyond that to the Valley!
And now that long standing vision is about to take a giant leap forward to becoming a reality! Committed neighbors and organizations like the RTF, Piedmont Environmental Council,and the new Friends of the Three Notched Trail, plus leaders in both the City and County have been tirelessly at work in moving this critically important project forward.
So, if all of this sounds as appealing to you as it does to our entire Lorenzoni family, I strongly encourage you, your friends and your family to join our community on Monday October 26 at 6:30pm at Henley Middle School for a Three Notched Trail public meeting. At this important meeting, everyone will be given a progress report and more detailed and updated information on this treasure of a trail and to hear more about the possible proposed route.
I’m thrilled, after almost fifty years of dreaming, that this journey towards having a long distance connector path is very much headed in the right direction and is on target to become a magical reality in the coming years. I simply can’t wait!
-Mark Lorenzoni has been coaching community runners and walkers and directing local runs on a volunteer basis, for over forty five years. He has served on several community boards, including the Charlottesville Track Club and the Rivanna Trails Foundation, and he can often be found hiking on our local trails with his wife and grandchildren
This article was published as a op-ed in the Daily Progress 10/25/26.
