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What Americans run on
Ask a runner what a trail is like and the first real answer is what's under their feet. Surface decides your shoes, your pace, your joints, and whether the route is runnable the day after rain — it is the single biggest reason two people describe the same city's trails completely differently. Nobody publishes it at scale, so we did: this is the surface mix of 30,420 catalogued US running trails, nationally and state by state.
The national mix
Across the 6,517 trails whose surface is confirmed (21.4% of the directory). Paved leads at 57.9%.
What each surface actually means for a run
Paved
Asphalt and concrete. Predictable, fast, plowed in winter, and runnable in road shoes the moment you step out of the car — which is why greenways and converted rail corridors get paved. The cost is impact: it is the hardest thing you can run on, and it bakes in summer sun.
Boardwalk
Elevated wood or composite decking, almost always over wetland, marsh or dune. Flat, scenic, and short — a boardwalk is usually a section of a longer route rather than the whole run — and genuinely slick when wet or frosty.
Mixed
More than one surface along the route. Common on long corridor trails that start paved in town and turn to gravel or dirt further out, so check which segment you are actually running.
Natural surface
Dirt, singletrack, and fire road. The easiest surface on your joints and the most interesting to run, at the price of roots, rocks, mud and a slower pace. This is where trail shoes start to matter, and where "how fast was that mile" stops meaning much.
Crushed gravel
Crushed limestone, screenings, cinder and packed gravel — the classic rail-trail surface. Softer than pavement and still smooth enough for tempo work, and it drains far better than dirt, so it is usually runnable a day after rain when the woods are still soup.
The most paved states in America
Share of each state's confirmed-surface trails that are asphalt or concrete. A high number is a greenway-and-rail-trail culture: flat, wide, strollable, plowed, and runnable in road shoes. Idaho tops it at 88.1%.
| # | State | % Paved | Paved trails | Confirmed surface |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Idaho | 88.1% | 37 | 42 |
| 2 | Kentucky | 84.6% | 55 | 65 |
| 3 | Arkansas | 83.3% | 45 | 54 |
| 4 | Nevada | 78.8% | 26 | 33 |
| 5 | Kansas | 75.5% | 37 | 49 |
| 6 | Missouri | 74.5% | 149 | 200 |
| 7 | Indiana | 72.4% | 110 | 152 |
| 8 | Texas | 71.4% | 257 | 360 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | 70.6% | 24 | 34 |
| 10 | Oregon | 70.1% | 94 | 134 |
| 11 | Mississippi | 69.2% | 18 | 26 |
| 12 | Utah | 69% | 80 | 116 |
The most natural-surface states
Share on dirt, singletrack or fire road — softer, slower, and a different pair of shoes. Maine leads at 27%, and Florida is the least paved state in the country at 27.7%.
| # | State | % Natural | Natural-surface trails | Confirmed surface |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maine | 27% | 10 | 37 |
| 2 | New Hampshire | 23.8% | 10 | 42 |
| 3 | Arizona | 20.7% | 12 | 58 |
| 4 | Colorado | 16.5% | 18 | 109 |
| 5 | California | 16.3% | 65 | 399 |
| 6 | Connecticut | 16.1% | 18 | 112 |
| 7 | North Carolina | 15.8% | 38 | 240 |
| 8 | Utah | 15.5% | 18 | 116 |
| 9 | Tennessee | 14.9% | 24 | 161 |
| 10 | Iowa | 14% | 8 | 57 |
| 11 | Nevada | 12.1% | 4 | 33 |
| 12 | Oklahoma | 11.8% | 4 | 34 |
The regional tells
Crushed stone is the rail-trail signature. The states where it's most common — Illinois (10.8%), Colorado (8.3%), Pennsylvania (6.1%), Oklahoma (5.9%), Iowa (5.3%) — are the ones that converted the most abandoned rail corridors into trails. Crushed limestone is what you lay on an old rail bed: cheap, flat by definition, softer than asphalt, and it drains.
Boardwalk is a coastline and wetland story. Florida (51.7%), Louisiana (44.2%), Massachusetts (43.8%), South Carolina (35.7%), Connecticut (33%) lead the country — decking is how you build a runnable path over marsh, dune or swamp. It's flat and scenic, it's usually a segment rather than a whole route, and it's slick in rain or frost.
Every state's surface mix
All five surfaces, every state, sorted by sample size. Percentages are shares of that state's confirmed-surface trails and add to 100%. Click a column to re-sort — but read the "confirmed surface" column first: a state with a handful of documented trails will swing wildly.
| State | Trails | Confirmed surface | % Paved | % Crushed | % Natural | % Boardwalk | % Mixed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Florida | 1,556 | 553 | 27.7% | 0.4% | 4.3% | 51.7% | 15.9% |
| Ohio | 1,489 | 433 | 61.4% | 3.2% | 5.1% | 18.2% | 12% |
| California | 3,350 | 399 | 61.4% | 1.5% | 16.3% | 11.8% | 9% |
| Texas | 1,829 | 360 | 71.4% | 2.5% | 6.4% | 10.8% | 8.9% |
| Pennsylvania | 1,360 | 311 | 66.9% | 6.1% | 6.8% | 10.6% | 9.6% |
| Illinois | 1,477 | 305 | 68.2% | 10.8% | 3.9% | 6.6% | 10.5% |
| Michigan | 1,071 | 297 | 52.9% | 1.3% | 9.1% | 22.6% | 14.1% |
| Washington | 1,096 | 264 | 57.6% | 3.8% | 7.2% | 22.3% | 9.1% |
| North Carolina | 818 | 240 | 59.2% | 0.4% | 15.8% | 12.9% | 11.7% |
| Minnesota | 842 | 236 | 64.8% | 0.8% | 8.1% | 13.1% | 13.1% |
| New York | 1,400 | 224 | 50% | 1.3% | 11.2% | 29% | 8.5% |
| Georgia | 746 | 209 | 56% | 1% | 8.1% | 23% | 12% |
| New Jersey | 1,070 | 202 | 56.9% | 1.5% | 10.4% | 24.3% | 6.9% |
| Massachusetts | 1,319 | 201 | 34.8% | 2% | 11.4% | 43.8% | 8% |
| Missouri | 652 | 200 | 74.5% | 2.5% | 8% | 3% | 12% |
| Wisconsin | 849 | 178 | 46.6% | 1.1% | 10.7% | 31.5% | 10.1% |
| Tennessee | 571 | 161 | 68.9% | 1.2% | 14.9% | 6.2% | 8.7% |
| Indiana | 634 | 152 | 72.4% | 2.6% | 5.9% | 13.2% | 5.9% |
| Oregon | 539 | 134 | 70.1% | 4.5% | 6% | 6.7% | 12.7% |
| Virginia | 431 | 120 | 57.5% | 1.7% | 10.8% | 15.8% | 14.2% |
| Utah | 605 | 116 | 69% | 1.7% | 15.5% | 5.2% | 8.6% |
| Alabama | 427 | 116 | 49.1% | 1.7% | 8.6% | 29.3% | 11.2% |
| Connecticut | 759 | 112 | 44.6% | 2.7% | 16.1% | 33% | 3.6% |
| Colorado | 595 | 109 | 56% | 8.3% | 16.5% | 9.2% | 10.1% |
| South Carolina | 345 | 98 | 43.9% | 0% | 9.2% | 35.7% | 11.2% |
| Kentucky | 287 | 65 | 84.6% | 4.6% | 3.1% | 3.1% | 4.6% |
| Maryland | 259 | 61 | 67.2% | 1.6% | 11.5% | 8.2% | 11.5% |
| Arizona | 483 | 58 | 67.2% | 3.4% | 20.7% | 0% | 8.6% |
| Iowa | 334 | 57 | 59.6% | 5.3% | 14% | 1.8% | 19.3% |
| Arkansas | 265 | 54 | 83.3% | 0% | 1.9% | 5.6% | 9.3% |
| Kansas | 305 | 49 | 75.5% | 2% | 6.1% | 6.1% | 10.2% |
| Louisiana | 173 | 43 | 48.8% | 0% | 2.3% | 44.2% | 4.7% |
| New Hampshire | 284 | 42 | 38.1% | 2.4% | 23.8% | 31% | 4.8% |
| Idaho | 217 | 42 | 88.1% | 0% | 7.1% | 2.4% | 2.4% |
| Maine | 207 | 37 | 29.7% | 2.7% | 27% | 32.4% | 8.1% |
| Oklahoma | 254 | 34 | 70.6% | 5.9% | 11.8% | 2.9% | 8.8% |
| Nevada | 143 | 33 | 78.8% | 0% | 12.1% | 6.1% | 3% |
| Rhode Island | 216 | 32 | 56.2% | 0% | 9.4% | 28.1% | 6.2% |
| Mississippi | 168 | 26 | 69.2% | 0% | 0% | 19.2% | 11.5% |
| Delaware | 65 | 22 | 59.1% | 0% | 0% | 22.7% | 18.2% |
| Nebraska | 109 | 19 | 73.7% | 0% | 0% | 21.1% | 5.3% |
| Montana | 102 | 16 | 62.5% | 6.2% | 18.8% | 6.2% | 6.2% |
| New Mexico | 169 | 16 | 81.2% | 6.2% | 6.2% | 6.2% | 0% |
| South Dakota | 113 | 15 | 53.3% | 13.3% | 33.3% | 0% | 0% |
| Vermont | 84 | 13 | 15.4% | 0% | 15.4% | 69.2% | 0% |
| Alaska | 67 | 13 | 38.5% | 0% | 30.8% | 30.8% | 0% |
| Hawaii | 30 | 13 | 30.8% | 0% | 53.8% | 7.7% | 7.7% |
| North Dakota | 65 | 11 | 90.9% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 9.1% |
| West Virginia | 91 | 9 | 66.7% | 22.2% | 11.1% | 0% | 0% |
| Wyoming | 77 | 4 | 100% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| District of Columbia | 23 | 3 | 0% | 0% | 33.3% | 66.7% | 0% |
How the surface is determined
Every trail is classified from evidence: the place's own description, the managing park, county or land-trust website, and what runners write in reviews. A trail described as a "paved 3-mile loop" is paved; one where reviewers talk about roots, mud and singletrack is natural surface; a corridor with both is mixed. When nothing says, the trail is left unclassified rather than guessed at — which is why every percentage on this page is a share of the 6,517 confirmed-surface trails, not of all 30,420.
That choice matters for comparing states. Documentation quality varies a lot by region, so using all trails as the denominator would simply rank states by how chatty their park departments are. Using the confirmed subset compares like with like — at the cost of noise in states with a small sample, which is why the rankings require at least 25 confirmed trails and the full table shows you the sample size.
One thing we deliberately do not publish: a difficulty rating. Easy/Moderate/Hard is the loudest documented complaint runners have about existing trail sites, because it means nothing across surfaces, distances and fitness levels. Surface, distance, shade and hours are facts you can act on; a one-word difficulty score isn't.