Over its 25-year history, Katy Trail State Park became one of the most successful rails-to-trails conversion projects in the United States and, as the nation’s longest developed rail-trail, was inducted into the national Rail-Trail Hall of Fame. Its route followed the former Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, begun in the 1870s and known as the Katy, which ran through much of the Missouri River valley by the 1890s, linked central Missouri agriculture with the rapidly developing American Southwest, supported towns along the corridor, and helped new towns such as Mokane and Tebbetts emerge. After severe flooding in the fall of 1986 washed out several miles of track, and amid repair costs, declining railroad use, and the company’s financial troubles, the railroad ceased operations, with trains 101 and 102 making the last run from Sedalia to Machens on Oct. 4, 1986. The National Trails System Act Amendments of 1983 had created railbanking to preserve rail corridors through conversion to public trails for possible future rail use, and in April 1987 the Missouri Department of Natural Resources received a Certificate of Interim Trail use for the Sedalia-to-Machens corridor and developed the route into a major trail. First named the Missouri River State Trail, the first section opened between Rocheport and McBaine in April 1990, another opened from Augusta to just northeast of Defiance in August 1990, and in 1991 the trail officially became Katy Trail State Park. By 1996 the corridor from St. Charles to just past Sedalia had been developed, a Union Pacific Railroad donation allowed extension to Clinton with the Sedalia-to-Clinton section opening in September 1999, and the final 12-mile section between St. Charles and Machens opened in 2011, completing the 240-mile trail. The park’s creation and growth depended heavily on community support, especially from Ted and Pat Jones, whose initial $2.2 million donation helped acquire the corridor and develop the trail; after Ted Jones’s death in 1990, Pat Jones and Edward Jones continued supporting reconstruction after the 1993 flood, funded the Sedalia-to-Clinton opening ceremony, and supported trail materials, while other Missouri conservation groups and communities along the route also helped develop, connect to, and sustain the trail.