Bikes, Boots, & Boats: Biking the Tobacco Heritage Trail, La Crosse, Va

Date Biked: April 3, 2020
Posted length: Approximately 17 miles. Conflicting mile markers closer to Lawrenceville
Total miles Tracked: 36 (South Hill to Lawrenceville) and 2.2 (Boydton)
Type of Trail: Rail trail, paved, crushed surface, dirt
Conveniences: Picnic tables and pit toilets along the trail.
Best Features: La Crosse section is flat and paved. The rest of the trail is more rugged but scenic.
Worst Features: No water
Wildlife spotted: None this trip
Vegetation: Red buds, flowering fruit trees, wildflowers, hardwood forests, kudzu
Associated Website: http://tobaccoheritagetrail.org/
Primary Author: James

If you study Google Maps, with bike routes turned on, you find the Tobacco Heritage Trail meandering long distances across southern Virginia. Alas, while a great deal of former railroad beds have apparently been set aside for the project, the actual bikable sections are someone small and scattered. There's a mile in Boydton, and roughly two miles in South Boston and Victoria. We've biked South Boston in the past and found it a very pleasant ride, though it's a bit short to go out of your way for. If all of these small segments are eventually connected, it's going to make for an impressive bit of biking.

Fortunately, there is already one nice, long segment, just over 17 miles connecting La Crosse, Virginia to Lawrenceville. Technically this isn't continuous, since it does go onto paved roads in Broadnax, Virginia, but you're riding on lightly trafficked back streets. Odds are good you'll pass through the town without even seeing a car on the road with you.

Seriously, traffic isn't a problem.

The old train station in Broadnax....

... located on Railroad St.

We parked at the trail head on Evans Creek Road a few miles outside Broadnax. We'd ridden this trail twice before, but this was our first time planning to do the full 35 mile round trip ride in a single trip. Previously, we'd found the section from Evans Creek to Broadnax to be the most difficult section . It's a fairly uphill grade from Evans Creek to Broadnax, and when we first biked in in 2016 we had to get off and push our bikes across soft, sandy sections where we were plagued by horseflies. We refer to this as as the "sand swamp" and often use it as a reference point for terrible rides. This time, however, we zipped into Broadnax without real exertion. Perhaps the trail is simply more packed down after a few years of use. Once you reach Broadnax, the trail to La Crosse is paved and flat.

The "Sand Swamp," now much less sandy and swampy!

La Crosse has a nice trail head park with a caboose. But, to the best of our knowledge, there are no bathrooms or water fountains. Still, if you are just looking for a short, pleasant ride, you can park here and do a round trip on the paved section of about 10 miles.

Oh! Right! This is an official segment of the East Coast Greenway!

One we reached the end of the trail in La Crosse, we headed back, aiming for the town on the far end, Lawrenceville. If you are making a similar journey, you might be alarmed when you notice that you're at mile marker 20 on what's supposed to be a 17 mile trail. I assume this is aspirational mileage, because there definitely isn't a mile 0 in Lawrenceville. In fact, mile markers, which are clearly marked each half mile, kind of vanish around mile marker 4. The trail past this seems very untended, to the point that we sometimes wondered if the trail might have officially stopped. But, we kept pushing on along the ruts to reach the Lawrenceville trail head. Unlike the nice park in La Crosse, the Lawrenceville end is just a sign and two dirt parking spaces. We biked this section before and went into Lawrenceville for lunch and it was a nice enough little town, but it doesn't seem like the locals make much use of the trail or are even much aware of it. There were several people walking and riding on the trail in La Cross, but we only passed one rider on our trip to Lawrenceville.

Sometimes the trail near Lawrenceville is nothing but a pair of ruts in the grass.

While Lawrenceville is somewhat of a dud as a destination, the actual ride from Evans Creek is quite worth it. You're mostly passing through farmland and forest. There are a few historical markers along the way, and old structures hidden back in the woods if you're watching for them. Most of the ride is shady, and while the surface can be a little rugged, the land is mostly flat. With a bike with a little shock absorption, it's a fun ride.

After we completed this large section of the trail, we packed up our bikes and headed west to find the section of the trail in Boydton. This section is relatively new, and boasts ample parking at both ends of the trail. While it's only just over a mile in length, we could tell that it gets a good amount of foot traffic. It is a rail trail, but beware of the steep hills where it dips down off the old rail-line at the halfway mark. At the terminus, we could see where the trail will continue in the future.