Nickel Plate Trail


The Nickel Plate Trail is a rail trail that currently encompasses approximately of abandoned railroad corridor in north central Indiana. The trail runs from Rochester to Kokomo, with a newer section in Indianapolis that opened in 2025.
WWW Official Site

Route

The northern endpoint of the trail starts is in Rochester in Fulton County, Indiana, and travels south into Miami County through Macy, Deedsville, and Denver to the north of Peru. The trail then uses various roadway combinations and picks back up as a separate trail on the west side of the city. From Peru, the trail heads south through Bunker Hill and Miami in Miami County and through Cassville in Howard County, for a total of.
A section in Indianapolis runs from 96th Street to the Indiana State Fairgrounds at 39th Street. The trail connects there with the Monon Trail and the Fall Creek Greenway. Work on this section began in 2023 and was completed in 2025 at a cost of $14.9 million. A short section of the trail near Interstate 465 will not open until 2026 due to construction work on that highway, and the city of Indianapolis plans to build pedestrian bridges for the trail over Keystone Avenue in 2026 and 82nd Street in 2028.

Plans

Currently, the trail ends in Howard County, just north of the city of Kokomo. In 2018, the Industrial Heritage Trail in Kokomo was extended via a lighted pedestrian bridge over Indiana [State Road 931|State Road 931] and under U.S. Route 31, effectively extending the trail to just south of Lincoln Road near State Road 931.
Other communities south of Kokomo have expressed interest in connecting to the Nickel Plate Trail. Recently, Tipton started work on a comprehensive plan with hopes of connecting to the Nickel Plate Trail. Should the Nickel Plate Trail connect to Tipton, the trail would then be near in length, the same length of the Cardinal Greenway, the current longest rail trail in Indiana. It would also connect Tipton, Sharpsville, and Oakford to Kokomo via an extension of the current Industrial Heritage Trail on the city's south side.
In Hamilton County, the tracks from Atlanta to Noblesville are used by the Nickel Plate Express heritage railway. From Noblesville to Indianapolis, construction has started to convert the right of way into another part of the Nickel Plate Trail.