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The State of Running Trails in America 2026
We catalogue 31,905 running trails, greenways and rail-trails across 50 states and Washington DC and 6,039 cities, and read each one for the handful of things runners actually decide on: what's underfoot, whether there's a measured loop, whether there's shade, whether the gate is locked at dawn. This page is the national picture that falls out of that — every figure below is computed from the directory, not estimated, and you're welcome to cite or download any of it.
Download the state-by-state CSV →
What Americans run on →
The surface report: paved vs crushed stone vs natural dirt vs boardwalk, state by state. Which states pave their trails, and which leave them in the woods.
Best cities for running trails →
The cities with the most trails outright, and the ones with the most trails per resident — where a runner is never far from a path.
Browse the trails themselves →
Skip the numbers and go find a run: browse by surface, loop distance, shade, lighting and trailhead parking.
What Americans run on
The national surface mix, across the 12,896 trails where the surface is confirmed by the trail's own description, its managing park or land trust's website, or runner reviews. Paved is the most common at 39.5% of confirmed trails. Surface is the first thing runners self-segregate on — it decides your shoes, your pace and whether the route is runnable the day after rain.
How long is a running trail?
Of the 3,382 trails that publish a distance, here's how that mileage falls. The median is 4 miles — long enough for an easy day, short enough that most people are doing laps for anything longer.
| Stated distance | Trails | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under 2 miles | 721 | 21.3% |
| 2–5 miles | 1,121 | 33.1% |
| 5–10 miles | 513 | 15.2% |
| 10+ miles | 1,027 | 30.4% |
Every state, ranked
Sorted by trails per million residents — the honest way to compare a state with 400 trails against one with 40. Connecticut leads at 215 trails per million residents. By raw count the biggest are California (3,600), Texas (1,913), Florida (1,633). Click any column heading to re-sort.
| State | Trails | Per 1M | Surface known | % Paved | % Natural | % Measured loop | % Shaded | % Dog-friendly | % Open 24h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connecticut | 790 | 215 | 307 | 20.8% | 46.3% | 4.7% | 3.8% | 39.1% | 15.2% |
| New Hampshire | 288 | 204.4 | 114 | 17.5% | 53.5% | 5.9% | 4.9% | 35.4% | 21.9% |
| Rhode Island | 219 | 196.9 | 87 | 25.3% | 44.8% | 5.9% | 3.7% | 39.3% | 11% |
| Massachusetts | 1,382 | 193.7 | 434 | 23.5% | 36.9% | 3.6% | 3.6% | 34.9% | 16.9% |
| Utah | 636 | 181.5 | 262 | 42.7% | 34% | 1.4% | 31.1% | 36% | 25.5% |
| Minnesota | 903 | 155.9 | 359 | 50.4% | 17% | 1.7% | 11.6% | 28% | 9.2% |
| Maine | 212 | 150.9 | 101 | 16.8% | 46.5% | 10.8% | 1.9% | 50% | 20.8% |
| Wisconsin | 891 | 149.5 | 336 | 32.4% | 25.6% | 1.5% | 8.4% | 28.6% | 8.9% |
| Washington | 1,128 | 141.7 | 555 | 35.5% | 23.4% | 5.6% | 12.5% | 55.4% | 14.9% |
| Wyoming | 81 | 137.8 | 28 | 28.6% | 35.7% | 0% | 12.3% | 50.6% | 27.2% |
| Oregon | 565 | 132.2 | 289 | 41.2% | 23.2% | 6.9% | 15.4% | 54.5% | 13.5% |
| Ohio | 1,564 | 131.6 | 774 | 42.4% | 19.1% | 5.4% | 13.7% | 29.4% | 9.3% |
| Vermont | 85 | 131.1 | 30 | 6.7% | 66.7% | 5.9% | 9.4% | 37.6% | 24.7% |
| South Dakota | 119 | 128.7 | 53 | 13.2% | 50.9% | 0% | 11.8% | 18.5% | 25.2% |
| Illinois | 1,560 | 122.7 | 534 | 51.5% | 12.9% | 4.5% | 9.7% | 36% | 8% |
| New Jersey | 1,126 | 118.5 | 380 | 36.8% | 28.7% | 2.7% | 8.4% | 31.7% | 27.4% |
| Idaho | 236 | 117.9 | 83 | 45.8% | 34.9% | 1.7% | 22.9% | 45.3% | 19.1% |
| Michigan | 1,123 | 110.7 | 516 | 37.6% | 22.1% | 3.7% | 11.8% | 37.2% | 12.6% |
| Missouri | 682 | 109.2 | 365 | 52.6% | 14.2% | 4.5% | 19.1% | 33.6% | 10.7% |
| Iowa | 354 | 109.2 | 107 | 56.1% | 17.8% | 1.7% | 13.6% | 25.4% | 10.5% |
| Kansas | 323 | 108.7 | 108 | 54.6% | 13.9% | 1.5% | 19.2% | 29.4% | 12.7% |
| Pennsylvania | 1,388 | 106.1 | 624 | 39.3% | 22.9% | 4.5% | 11.7% | 36.1% | 27.6% |
| Colorado | 615 | 103.2 | 271 | 30.3% | 36.5% | 5.9% | 16.9% | 53.2% | 15.4% |
| Indiana | 661 | 95.5 | 293 | 54.3% | 13% | 4.5% | 12.1% | 28.1% | 10.4% |
| Montana | 105 | 92.3 | 42 | 21.4% | 47.6% | 2.9% | 9.5% | 48.6% | 25.7% |
| California | 3,600 | 91.3 | 1,011 | 41.8% | 34% | 5.1% | 24.9% | 45.5% | 16.8% |
| Alaska | 67 | 90.5 | 36 | 16.7% | 38.9% | 7.5% | 0% | 32.8% | 47.8% |
| Arkansas | 272 | 88.1 | 110 | 40% | 21.8% | 5.1% | 12.1% | 23.9% | 15.1% |
| North Dakota | 70 | 87.9 | 20 | 65% | 15% | 0% | 8.6% | 22.9% | 17.1% |
| Alabama | 446 | 86.5 | 205 | 35.6% | 21% | 4.7% | 20.9% | 31.6% | 17.9% |
| New Mexico | 183 | 85.9 | 63 | 23.8% | 47.6% | 5.5% | 21.3% | 44.3% | 23% |
| Tennessee | 583 | 80.7 | 302 | 46.7% | 21.2% | 7.7% | 14.6% | 37% | 11.1% |
| North Carolina | 844 | 76.4 | 479 | 37.2% | 24.6% | 7.5% | 23.3% | 41.5% | 12.3% |
| New York | 1,465 | 73.7 | 515 | 28.2% | 39.6% | 2.2% | 6.4% | 36.2% | 22.8% |
| Florida | 1,633 | 69.9 | 745 | 31.1% | 8.6% | 4.9% | 33.3% | 37.2% | 11% |
| Georgia | 778 | 69.6 | 366 | 43.2% | 15% | 4.6% | 20.6% | 38.6% | 11.1% |
| Arizona | 522 | 68.8 | 210 | 29% | 51% | 9% | 19.3% | 34.9% | 15.3% |
| Oklahoma | 274 | 66.9 | 74 | 59.5% | 23% | 1.5% | 14.2% | 33.2% | 19.3% |
| South Carolina | 365 | 66.6 | 169 | 34.9% | 12.4% | 6.3% | 26.3% | 44.9% | 13.7% |
| Kentucky | 300 | 65.4 | 137 | 55.5% | 19% | 5% | 15.3% | 38.3% | 14.3% |
| Delaware | 66 | 62.7 | 37 | 37.8% | 10.8% | 3% | 22.7% | 47% | 24.2% |
| Mississippi | 182 | 61.8 | 59 | 50.8% | 16.9% | 3.8% | 18.1% | 28.6% | 20.3% |
| Texas | 1,913 | 61.1 | 730 | 54.5% | 17.8% | 3.5% | 27.8% | 34.6% | 12.4% |
| Nebraska | 116 | 57.8 | 41 | 63.4% | 4.9% | 1.7% | 15.5% | 23.3% | 13.8% |
| West Virginia | 93 | 52.5 | 28 | 39.3% | 25% | 2.2% | 2.2% | 25.8% | 21.5% |
| Virginia | 438 | 49.7 | 231 | 40.7% | 22.9% | 6.6% | 16% | 37.9% | 15.5% |
| Nevada | 145 | 44.4 | 60 | 53.3% | 26.7% | 8.3% | 30.3% | 56.6% | 24.8% |
| Louisiana | 197 | 42.8 | 59 | 47.5% | 13.6% | 2.5% | 18.3% | 27.9% | 24.9% |
| Maryland | 264 | 42.2 | 121 | 38% | 23.1% | 6.8% | 12.9% | 37.1% | 18.2% |
| District of Columbia | 23 | 32.8 | 9 | 11.1% | 44.4% | 4.3% | 13% | 30.4% | 47.8% |
| Hawaii | 30 | 20.7 | 27 | 14.8% | 51.9% | 20% | 40% | 23.3% | 30% |
The pavement line
The most paved state in the country is Nebraska, where 63.4% of confirmed-surface trails are asphalt or concrete. That's a greenway-and-rail-trail culture: flat, strollable, plowed in winter, and runnable in road shoes straight out of the car.
At the other end, Vermont is the most natural-surface state, with 66.7% of its confirmed trails on dirt or singletrack — softer on the joints, slower per mile, and a different pair of shoes.
Neither is better. It's the single biggest reason two runners describe the same city's trails completely differently, and it's why we publish the surface instead of a difficulty score. The full surface report →
Methodology
Listings are compiled from public map and business data and filtered to places with proven runnable paths — evidence from the place's own description, its website, or runner reviews. Playgrounds, ball fields, boat ramps, parking lots and athletic tracks are excluded, however park-like their listing looks.
Attributes are evidence floors, not guarantees. A trail counts as paved, shaded, dog-friendly or measured only when something says so — the trail's own description, the park or land trust's website, or repeated runner reviews. So every percentage here is a conservative "at least this many", and a 0% is far more likely to mean "nobody writes it down in that state" than "it doesn't exist". Surface percentages are computed over the confirmed-surface subset so that states with better documentation don't automatically look more paved.
"Open 24 hours" means the posted hours are 24 hours on all seven days. Most trails aren't: they follow park hours, and dawn-to-dusk gates are the norm — which is exactly why the 24-hour ones matter to anyone who runs before work.
Population figures are US Census 2024 estimates. Per-capita city figures use incorporated-place populations and require a real sample, so a village with two trails can't top the list. We do not publish a difficulty rating — Easy/Moderate/Hard is the loudest documented complaint about existing trail sites, and it means nothing across surfaces and fitness levels. We publish the facts a runner can act on instead.