The Pacific Crest Trail winds for 2,650 miles through deserts, mountain passes, and canyons on the West Coast. The Appalachian Trail, its counterpart to the east, traverses dappled forests and river gorges for 2,200 miles. Somewhere in the middle, the Continental Divide Trail follows the spine of the Rocky Mountains for 3,100 miles.
Along those three trails, dubbed the Triple Crown of Hiking, long-distance hikers blister their toes, wear clothing to a frazzle, whip their bodies into shape, and learn all about themselves. As anyone who’s read the books Wild or A Walk in the Woods, or seen their movie adaptations, can attest, finding yourself and pushing your limits on a through hike has become a time-honored American tradition. And now, trail advocates say, it’s time for Texas to get its own long-distance route worthy of bragging rights.
“Those of us who like to go cross-country have limited choices in Texas,” says Charlie Gandy, a bicycle advocate, retired community design consultant, and former state representative who recently unveiled plans for a 1,500-mile multiuse hiking, biking, and equestrian route called the Cross Texas Trail. “We have postage stamp–sized parks where we can go round and round, but not many long distances where we can do more than a hundred miles at a time.”
Anyone can grab a bike, saddle a horse, or lace up a pair of hiking boots and set out across the state whenever they want. But an official route would help adventurers avoid busy roads, find places to stay overnight, and locate little-known highlights—all a challenge in a state that’s more than 96 percent privately owned. The longest continuous trail in the state, the Lone Star Hiking Trail, runs just 96 miles, through the Sam Houston National Forest, in East Texas.
For now, the Cross Texas Trail, or XTX, as its promoters call it, is only a red line on a map. Cobbled together mainly from quiet back roads and existing trails, it will stretch from east to west across the midsection of the state, dipping and diving to hit historical sites, parks, and interesting small towns along the way. About 40 percent of the route will be on gravel roads.
“The eastern portion is big on barbecue, beer, and Blue Bell ice cream. The western part is cactus, rattlesnakes, dust, near death, and tarantulas,” says Gandy, who presented his plans in early September at the Texas Trails and Active Transportation Conference in Austin, where government representatives, transportation planners, cycling and health advocates, and parks officials met to discuss trails.
Starting in Orange—Gandy recommends going east to west to take advantage of prevailing winds—the route gains 56,000 feet of cumulative elevation on its way to El Paso. Trail users will pass through or near La Grange, home of the infamous Chicken Ranch whorehouse; Gruene, where two-steppers spin across the floor at a historic dance hall; Fort Clark, home of the Fort Clark Bicycle Corps (a short-lived U.S. Army cycling experiment in the 1890s); prickly Big Bend National Park, in the Chihuahuan Desert; and Guadalupe Mountains National Park, home to the tallest peak in the state. As they pedal, plod, or ride their horses, they’ll learn about gumbo and sweet tea, barbecue and Shiner Bock, Longhorns and historic towns with exotic stories.
“I’m a native Texan, and I’ve got my grievances with some Texans and Texas politics, but I really love the state,” Gandy says. “I’m attempting to piece together a route that not only shows off what’s truly spectacular and avoids what’s not in terms of beauty—it’s also a place where those who take on the trail will learn more about themselves than they ever did in high school.”
Gandy, 66, an avid hiker and cyclist who grew up in Mesquite, later moved to Austin, and now lives in Poulsbo, Washington, dreamed up the idea while hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail in California this summer. Inspired by Troy Hopwood, who created a challenging, approximately seven-hundred-mile route across Washington state, he roughed out a meandering path across Texas, then broke it into hundred-mile sections. Trail users, he says, might do a section or two in a weekend or attempt to tackle the entire route over several weeks. If they want, they can load their bikes onto an Amtrak train in El Paso when they finish and head back to their starting point in East Texas.
“It’s not a straight line, but in my estimate, I think it’s the most scenic route through Texas because it combines the Gulf Coast, the Piney Woods of East Texas, the Hill Country, and the desert of West Texas,” Gandy says. “I’m interested in the coolest route, the most target-rich, true-to-Texas route.” The trail will offer an alternative to existing long-distance trails where hikers must contend with wildfires in the summer or snow and ice in the winter. In recent years, hikers in California have had to detour off the Pacific Crest Trail to avoid smoke caused by wildfires.
Gandy considers the Cross Texas Trail his legacy project. He had rheumatic fever as a kid and didn’t expect to live past thirty, which he says triggered a sense of urgency to get things done. He represented Mesquite in the Texas Legislature from 1983 to 1985, when he was in his twenties, and started a citywide tug-o’-war pitting the yuppies of North Austin against the Bubbas of South Austin in the 1980s. He later started the Texas Bicycle Coalition nonprofit, now BikeTexas, to give cyclists a voice in the political process. He believes that long-distance trails save lives, because users can break away from personal demons and find peace along the way.
Gandy is working with BikeTexas to make the trail a reality. He’s contributed $10,000 to the effort and has landed another $10,000 donation. He says another $30,000 is needed by spring 2025 to create print and digital route maps, publicize the trail, and scout sections of it.
At the trails conference in Austin in early September, news of the route was met with enthusiasm, says Robin Stallings, executive director of BikeTexas. “This Cross Texas Trail is going to be an epic equestrian, hiking, mountain biking trail,” he says. “We’ve got a lot to see, and it’s good for business to bring people to Texas. And it’s really good for public health.”
Others like the idea but worry it’ll distract from other needs. Ky Harkey, a former Texas Parks and Wildlife employee and hard-core adventurer who now consults with parks to improve the ways they serve visitors, says he likes the idea of improving connectivity across the state because Texas has a land-accessibility problem. “A trail across Texas wouldn’t be the pristine wilderness of the Tahoe Rim Trail, but it could move the needle with increasing access to the lands we have and getting people out to explore their communities more,” he says. “My biggest concern is that [it] would take away resources and attention from our need for more trails in our urban cores.”
Over the next twenty to forty years, the trail would evolve—perhaps migrating off initial routes as rights-of-way are acquired. New stretches of trail could be constructed to divert users from busier roads. Eventually, water caches and cisterns would be added, along with trail markers. “That’s how these legacy trails get established,” Gandy says.
Rhea Wallace, a 64-year-old retired defense manufacturer from Grand Prairie who now lives in Seattle, says long-distance cycling saved him after his wife and children were killed by a drunk driver. He began mountain biking to get in better shape, and he eventually moved to Washington, where he met Gandy. “Biking became my sanctuary,” Wallace says. “I’ve always liked challenging myself. Every year I have a mountain climb and a bike ride, and every year I try to find the bike ride I think I can’t do.” That led him to do the roughly seven-hundred-mile Cross-Washington route, which he describes as the hardest thing he’s ever done. Now he’s interested in the Cross Texas Trail.
“It’s the best way to experience the diversity of the state, from the Piney Woods to the Chihuahuan Desert,” Wallace says. “Also, in this current state of political divide, it’s an opportunity to experience the hospitality and friendliness of strangers you might not otherwise talk to traveling any other way.”
The XTX—at least the western half of it—won’t be easy and wasn’t designed for beginners, Gandy says. “From the Devils River west is a serious endeavor. I’m not encouraging anyone to do it now unless they’re familiar with desert travel,” Gandy says. “That’s where it separates the women from the girls.”
“We’re at the infancy stage of a big, hairy goal,” Gandy says. But he’s already started “ground proofing” the route, checking out sections to troubleshoot obstacles and meeting with people who live and work along it. He’s even purchased an XTX brand, which he plans to use to mark fence posts along the trail. And in April, he hopes to celebrate the route with a grand opening.
