North Carolina Rail-Trails Records 1977-2017

North Carolina Rail-Trails (NCRT), a volunteer organization supported by dues, gifts, and grants, began as a steering committee at the North Carolina Greenways Conference in Charlotte on June 3, 1988. North Carolina Rail-Trails, headquartered in Durham, became incorporated on March 12, 1990. NCRT is a charter member of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits and the Environmental Federation of North Carolina, a Durham-based organization that endeavors to both protect and preserve the state's natural resources. NCRT's purpose is threefold: to monitor the state's rail system, to pursue corridor preservation, and to both retrieve and convert rail corridors to public trails. NCRT coordinates projects among local, state, and federal agencies and organizations.

Since 1989 NCRT has published a quarterly newsletter called "Little Toot," which informs members and interested citizens about activities of the organization, as well as the status of rail-trail projects throughout the state. NCRT's Board of Directors meets quarterly at various project locations in North Carolina. Members of the Board represent a variety of interests, including bicycling, hiking, equestrian, historic, conservation, preservation, and economic. NCRT, along with the North Carolina Railroad Company, Friends of the State Parks, and the North Carolina Sierra Club Chapter, has introduced railbanking legislation through the state Rails Council, legislative research committees, and the North Carolina General Assembly.

Several organizations have given grants to NCRT, including: the NC Division of Parks and Recreation, the Mary Duke Biddle and Bryan Family foundations, and the North Carolina Rural Center.

In the Winter 2017 Newsletter, the NCRT Board of Directors asked the members to approve of NCRT's dissolution. The meeting to vote on dissolution took place March 2, 2017.

This collection consists of organizational records, reference material, and archived web content that North Carolina Rail-Trails (NCRT) both created and used to facilitate the operation of the organization. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence, NCRT meeting minutes and agendas, brochures, flyers, several newsletters, including "Little Toot," newspaper and magazine articles, essays for "Little Toot" by Anthony Reevy, past historian and vice chair of NCRT, work plans, reports, studies, proposals, maps, essays on North Carolina rail-trails and railways, legal documents including financial statements and property deeds, organizational development and strategic planning records and copies of ratified senate and house bills.

Organizational records include plans and updates on the American Tobacco Trail, correspondence between members of the NCRT Board of Directors, "Little Toot" articles, newspaper, magazine, and journal articles about greenways and rail trails, as well as other environmental and conservation concerns, throughout North Carolina and the United States, a copy of the 1991 North Carolina Greenway Advisory Board report, and North Carolina rail corridor updates. Also included are lists of the NCRT Board of Directors from 1990 until 2009, information on the Land Trust Alliance and proposals for land use, various legal documents, NCRT meeting minutes from 1990 until 2015, a collection of "Little Toot" newsletters from 1989, with few gaps, flyers and brochures that pertain to both local and national rail trails, greenway and rail trail organizations, as well as other conservation or environmentalist organizations, and various North Carolina rail trail proposals and plans. Copies of ratified Senate and House bills that pertain to the approval of land and rail corridor preservation, the provision of rail revitalization funds, and the regulation of leasing rail corridors, as well as records of NCRT's efforts in shaping policy and legislation, through correspondence, lobbying, signature campaigns, and presentations are also housed here. Also chronicled are the NCRT's relationships with both public institutions, from the municipal to the federal levels, and with other private organizations, and NCRT's contributions and input on the topics of conservation and environmentalism, public recreation, especially as related to healthy citizens, city planning and urban beautification, and many specific collaborations on the subject of landscape architecture.

Records are arranged topically by series. Within each series, folders are arranged chronologically, except in the series devoted to trails and to North Carolina counties, which are arranged alphabetically.

This collection is arranged in 15 series:

General Rail-Trail Studies, Reports, and Guidelines; Board of Directors; Correspondence and Papers; Business Administration; Grants, Funding, and Fundraising; Trails; NC Counties; Maps; Newsletters; Newspaper, Magazine, and Journal Clippings; Brochures and Flyers; CDs and DVDs; Conferences; Other Conservation Organizations; Web Content, Beginning in February 2016.

The nature of the NC State University Libraries' Special Collections means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult or even impossible to determine despite reasonable efforts. The NC State University Libraries claims only physical ownership of most Special Collections materials.

The materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source.

This collection may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which North Carolina State University assumes no responsibility.

[Identification of item], North Carolina Rail-Trails Records, MC 00265, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC

Gift of Anthony Reevy, 1999-2016 (Accession nos. 1999.0008, 2013.0070, 2016.0268) and North Carolina Rail-Trails, 2011-2012 (Accession nos. 2011.0149, 2012.0080, 2012.0156); gift of Emily Herbert, 2016 (Accession no. 2016.0032). Web content harvested using the Internet Archive's Archive-It services, monthly starting in 2016.

Processed by Jane V. Charles; Nancy J. Kaiser

Completed July, 1999; October 2000; Updated by Judy Allen Dodson, March 2010; Updated by Judy Allen Dodson 2011; updated by Jennifer Baker April 2013; Updated by Jacque Dinnes February 2016; Updated by Gwynn Thayer and Lindsey Naylor August 2016; Updated by Peter Raia June 2017. Archived web content processed by Liz Bell, 2020 January.