The Gainesville–Hawthorne State Trail is a 16-mile paved rail trail in north Florida that follows a former Atlantic Coast Line Railroad corridor from Gainesville’s Boulware Springs Water Works to Hawthorne through Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park and the Lochloosa Wildlife Management Area. After Florida bought the property from CSX Transportation in late 1989 with Trails from Rails funding, the trail opened in January 1992 as a public corridor for non-motorized travel. It preserves both transportation and frontier history, including carved live oaks at Witness Tree Junction linked to Colonel Daniel Newnan’s Patriot War of 1812 march and later railroad surveying.

Hawthorne, Florida · USA