Sat, Nov 21 2009
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Published June 04, 2008 06:40 pm - By the middle of this month, Dave Turnbull, a resident of New Zealand, will probably know more about America’s Underground Railroad than any other citizen of that country. Following the drinking gourd Cyclists on Underground Railroad Tour stop in city By CARL E. FEATHER - Lifestyle Editor - cfeather@starbeacon.com Star Beacon By the middle of this month, Dave Turnbull, a resident of New Zealand, will probably know more about America’s Underground Railroad than any other citizen of that country.
Turnbull, a retired teacher, is cycling the Underground Railroad Bicycle Route with an Adventure Cycling Association tour group. He and the other five men in the group stopped at Ashtabula Harbor’s Hubbard House Tuesday morning for a tour of the museum, once a terminus on the railroad. The cyclists are riding from Mobile, Ala., to Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada, as they cover the 2,100-mile route that escaped slaves traveled to freedom. They left Mobile April 27. They camped in Ashtabula Monday night after cycling through Ashtabula County on the Western Reserve Greenway Trail. “The Western Reserve Greenway Trail is nice,” said Dave Cox, the tour’s leader. “We’ve been on several rail trails while in Ohio.” Cox has led nearly a dozen cycling trips with the Association. He said leaders can select from a list of 25 to 30 proposed routes and express their preferences. Cox says this tour’s route through the Deep South made it of interest to him because it’s an area he’s not explored. George Martin, a retired federal worker from Oxon Hill, Maryland, said the route appealed to him because of his interest in history. “I like U.S. Civil War history and this was the best option I had for doing a long-distance trip,” he said. “This has been very enlightening.” The route grew out of a partnership between Adventure Cycling Association and the Center for Minority Health at the University of Pittsburgh. The groups share a common goal of promoting lifelong health through a form of physical activity available to people of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. Adventure Cycling worked with historians, preservationists and researchers to map out a route freedom seekers would have used as they were guided by the song “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” The song referred to following waterways and the North Star from Alabama and Mississippi to the Ohio River. Actual routes used by the escaped slaves are impossible to ascertain as the railroad was not so much a physical route as it was a movement of people who assisted the slaves in their quest for freedom. As such, the route is a series of communities and landmarks connected by great cycling roads and paths. The route traverses eight states and one Canadian province. It was named one of the world’s top 10 bicycle routes in National Geographic’s “Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the world’s Greatest Trips.” It is entered in a global competition, “Geotourism Challenge, Celebrating Places, Changing Lives,” sponsored by National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations and Changemakers. While most Ohio residents have a fundamental knowledge of the Underground Railroad, it is not as familiar to other U.S. citizens or those in other nations. “I’ve certainly learned a lot about it,” Cox said. “I grew up in the Northwest, and history there is more about John Colter, trappers and fur-trading endeavors.” 
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