OK, I have explored the Fox River Trail (FRT) detours south of Elgin, the construction at the old stone railway bridge there and the Illinois Prairie Path (IPP) intersection that I was wondering about (obsessed with) since my last ride on the trail when I accidently ended up on the IPP before getting on to the Stearns Road Trail SRT) and back to the FRT in South Elgin.

First, the FRT and IPP intersection is right where it has always been, just south of Elgin before the old stone railway bridge and tunnel. There is a lot of construction here, with large construction signs which is why I did not notice the intersection and just got on to the IPP.

It turns out that the IPP is in much better condition and, in a lot of ways, a better way to get into South Elgin anyway. A lot of the FRT is closed between Elgin and South Elgin, in pretty poor condition and it appears to have not been maintained for quite a while – but you can ride the FRT (with a few side road detours) into South Elgin if you choose to go that way. 

I have written up all the details and included photos of the detour and construction and a photo of how the new railway tunnel will look in a separate page on this website. See The Fox River Trail Detours page (here) for more information and photos about what I have posted here.

Also here is a link to the GPS Map of my ride that I took to explore these trails on the Garmin website.

And one last little technical update on this website. I finally got around to doing a pretty significant make-over of the Fox River Trail pages on this website. I started this website back in 2003 and have been doing updates since then. For the Fox River Trail, I originally created 2 pages, The Fox River Trail North page and the Fox River South page.

Over the years I realized that this made it hard to find information on the FRT and was confusing and difficult to maintain so I have consolidated these 2 pages into one single Fox River Trail page here. There are still some references to the old North/South pages but this is the new single location for photos and information on the FRT.

Yea, a lot of the photos of this trail (and others) go back to 2003 too! Although I try to get new updated and better quality photos when I can, I have left the old ones there (even when there are new ones) for the historical (and nostalgic) purposes.