Walk the Derry Rail Trail this week and nothing looks different. The pavement still runs under a canopy of trees past the wetlands near the Windham line, the illustrated tribute to Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" still stretches across the surface near town, and Hood Park's trout pond still draws the same after-work walkers it always has. But this past February, a fight that had been quietly reshaping the trail's future for five years finally ended, and the outcome changes what gets built at the one intersection every regular user has been dreading: Folsom Road.
If you've used the trail near the north end, you already know the spot. It's where the path will eventually have to cross a brand-new six-lane access road being built for Interstate 93's Exit 4A. The question of how pedestrians and cyclists would get across that road, whether through a tunnel or across the traffic at grade, spent years tied up in a federal lawsuit. That lawsuit is over now, and the side that wanted the tunnel won.
The Fight Nobody Driving Past Was Watching
Here's the part that surprised even people who follow Derry's trail closely: a tunnel under the new road was the original plan. State and federal transportation officials approved it back in 2019 after public hearings. Then, in 2021, the state reversed course on its own and submitted a new design to the Federal Highway Administration, one that swapped the tunnel for a steep ramp leading to a signalized crosswalk across all six lanes of the new road. According to New Hampshire Rail Trails Coalition president Dave Topham, the Federal Highway Administration approved that revised plan within a single business day.
Trail advocates called the new design a "spaghetti loop," and the name stuck for a reason. It routed cyclists and pedestrians up a ten-foot incline on a winding path before dumping them into a crosswalk against six lanes of highway traffic. The stated justification was cost. Court filings put the savings anywhere from $400,000 to $770,000 depending on which estimate you read, but the range itself tells you something: nobody was arguing the crosswalk was safer, only cheaper.
That's what triggered the lawsuit. In 2024, the Committee to Save the Derry Rail Trail Tunnel and the national Rails to Trails Conservancy sued the state Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, arguing the crosswalk design would cut through the Manchester & Lawrence Railroad Historic District without a real look at less harmful alternatives. In June 2025, U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro sided with them, ruling that federal transportation law, specifically a provision known as Section 4(f), requires agencies to prove there's no reasonable way to avoid harming a historic corridor before they're allowed to alter it. He found the state hadn't done that.
The state considered appealing. Instead, in February 2026, both sides reached a settlement: the tunnel gets built as originally designed.
What the Settlement Actually Locks In
The practical result is straightforward. NHDOT will build an underpass beneath the new Exit 4A access road instead of the crosswalk, preserving the trail's original alignment through the historic rail corridor. Derry Rail Trail Alliance president Kevin Gordon put it plainly when the settlement was announced, calling the tunnel "the best and safest option" for a trail used by everyone from parents pushing strollers to competitive cyclists.
Topham, who spent years working toward this outcome, said the resolution means his organization can finally move from litigation to logistics.
"We've known that the law was on our side as we fought to protect the historic rail corridor, and create a seamless, safe walking and biking connection for the region."
For someone who uses the trail regularly, the difference between the two designs isn't abstract. A tunnel means the trail keeps its character, a continuous paved path without a break in the pattern. A six-lane crosswalk, even a signalized one, means every walker, runner, and cyclist has to stop, wait, and cross live highway traffic at a point where cars are accelerating onto or off an interstate. The settlement removes that from the picture entirely.
The Trail You're Already Walking
Worth remembering, in the middle of all this legal back-and-forth, is what the trail actually offers day to day. The Derry Rail Trail runs roughly four miles of paved path from the Windham line north into downtown Derry, following the old Manchester and Lawrence Railroad bed. Poet Robert Frost taught at Derry's Pinkerton Academy, and the trail's surface carries an illustrated homage to his best-known poem, a small detail that turns an ordinary stretch of pavement into something locals point out to visitors.
Further south, near the Beaver Brook crossing, the trail passes over a stone arch bridge known locally as Lover's Leap. Regular users report herons and turtles in the wetlands along the route, along with the occasional beaver. The trail ends at Hood Park, which has a playground, basketball courts, picnic tables, and a pond stocked annually with brook and rainbow trout. Combined with the roughly 4.7-mile Derry Bike Loop Path that circles the town, the network gives Derry more than ten miles of connected multi-use trail, all maintained in part by the Derry Rail Trail Alliance, a nonprofit that's been working on the corridor since 2007.
Trailside, Not Just Trailhead
Where the trail crosses East Broadway into downtown, it runs past a small cluster of businesses that have become part of the after-walk routine for a lot of regulars.
- Foundation Kitchen & Bar, at 32 West Broadway, took over the old West Broadway firehouse in 2023, most recently home to Halligan's Irish pub. The eclectic bistro menu leans on small plates and shareable large plates.
- Friendly Red's Food and Spirits, at 111 West Broadway, opened its second location in July 2023 in the space that had been Derry Restaurant & Pizza for 38 years before the owners retired. The building now seats over 100 inside with a patio for another 66.
- Hare of the Dawg, a comfort-food bar and grill downtown, serves the kind of post-walk menu that draws families and regulars from Derry and neighboring towns alike.
None of these places sit directly on the pavement, but they're close enough that a lot of trail users treat them as the unofficial finish line.
Where the Path Goes From Here
The tunnel settlement matters for more than the mile or so around Folsom Road. It clears the way for Derry's trail to keep functioning as a link in a much bigger chain. To the south, the Derry Rail Trail already connects to the Windham Rail Trail near the restored Windham Junction depot and caboose, giving trail users a continuous route toward Salem. To the north, roughly a mile still separates Derry's trail from Londonderry's, though the Londonderry Trailways organization recently received a $50,000 donation from the New Balance Foundation specifically earmarked to help close that gap.
The long-term vision, championed by the New Hampshire Rail Trails Coalition, is the Granite State Rail Trail, a connected path envisioned to run more than 120 miles across southern New Hampshire, eventually linking Salem to Manchester and beyond, where it would tie into the growing network of trails maintained under the Manchester Moves initiative. Derry's tunnel was one of the last major legal obstacles standing between the current patchwork and that connected version. With the settlement in place, the missing pieces are now mostly a matter of funding and construction scheduling rather than courtrooms.
For anyone who already treats this trail as part of a weekly routine, that's the real headline. The path under your feet is about to become part of something considerably larger than a local amenity.
If you're already walking this trail on a regular basis and find yourself curious what a home near Hood Park or downtown Derry is actually worth in today's market, that's a conversation Syrene Living is glad to have, with the same plain-numbers approach Bryan brings to every client. Let's Connect.
