If you live in the deep south of the United States and you are new to casual cycling, not hard core road biking, I would highly recommend the Man O’ War Rail Trail as a first trail ride experience.

This trail does have some elevation gain and loss, but overall is a gentle easy ride. We are lucky enough to live about an hour from this trail and it was the very first rail trail we had ever tried when we first purchased our first e-bikes.

The trail is located in Harris County Georgia, next to the Callaway Gardens Resort in the central western part of Georgia. One of the great things about this trail right from the start is that it is totally free. You do not have to pay an entrance fee to access the resort to ride the trail. The trail skirts the outer edge of the Callaway Gardens Resort area and F. D. Roosevelt State Park, so you get to travel through all the beauty of the natural surroundings for free.

This past week, we rode the trail again in order to get some good photos and enjoy a break from the hot sun by riding through the cool shade of the beautiful pines and hardwoods that cover nearly 80% of the trail.

Our ride begins at the Callaway Gardens Country Store, which is generally accepted as one of the three main trailheads available. The store is located in the middle of the trail and at the highest point of the ride. Therefore, when you begin your ride from this trailhead, you will be descending regardless of which direction you decide to ride. This also means that your trip back to this trailhead parking lot will be ascending, but it is not steep, just long and gradual.

Ride with GPS Route

Below is the embed for our actual Ride with GPS profile ride from this trip, you can click on the title for more details.

The total length of the trail is 13 miles, so if you ride it completely up and back (including both the north and south portions) the total ride from your car is 26 miles.

Across the road from the country store you see this magnificent view before you even begin to ride. The trail is located behind the country store, so you will have to cross at the provided crosswalk from the parking lot to the store and then head to the left of the store parking area (the Country Store also has signs that say to park across the street, they apparently don’t want trail riders parking in the restaurant parking lot).

When you begin this ride at the country store (and when you end there) you must traverse a set of switchbacks (see photos at the end of this post) that I recommend walking your bike through. The switchbacks take you from the back of the store down to the actual trail and the turns are hairpin for sure.

As always, our Papillion, Edgar accompanied us on our ride. You can see him in his custom crafted dog carrier that we made in the photo below.

This multi-use rail trail is about 80% tree covered and the maintenance on the infrastructure is impeccable. There was a recent storm that had come through and knocked down several trees over the railings, but these had all been removed and the trail cleaned off quickly.

The other 20% of the trail is open, as you see below. These open sections come at each end of the trail as you head into Hamilton, GA at the southern end, or Pine Mountain, GA at the north.

On this day we headed south towards Hamilton, GA first. This is the longer of the two sections by a mile, or two. When you arrive in Hamilton, you continue on the trail for another 3-5 miles until you reach the actual dead end of the trail. There is a wonderful turnaround area built in a boardwalk style with benches, trash receptacles, and trail map.

After a brief rest, walk-a-bout and snack, we headed back towards the country store to do the northern section.

When riding the northern section, toward Pine Mountain, GA, you will cross over US Hwy 27 on this bridge. On the outside of this bridge is a sign for motorists that is really cool to see (photo below). You cannot get a good shot of the sign from the bridge, as it is heavily fenced, but we stopped and got a shot of the sign on the way out of the area at dusk that turned out very nice.

It was just past dinner time when we arrived at the northern end of the trail in Pine Mountain and we stopped at Three Lil’ Pigs for dinner. The bar-b-que was good. The hardest part about this (and other local restaurants on the trail) is that most of them are across the road from the trail. There is no crosswalk where the restaurants are and, if you do use the crosswalk that is at the light before you get to the resturants, there is no bike bath on the restaurant side of the road. That would be something that could be a huge improvement and would probably add to the bottom line for these local establishments. We crossed the busy road directly across from the restaurant, but it was not optimal.

If we had one complaint about this trail as a whole it would be that there are not enough restrooms (or any in some circumstances) for a comfortable day long ride. There is a welcome center entering Hamilton, but we got there around 4:30pm local time and it was closed. There is a restroom inside the Country Store, but it closes at 3:30pm local time so it was also closed. Other than those two, there really aren’t any “official” restrooms for the trail. The restaurant in this case was fine, but anything after hours you may have to get creative.

Trailhead Switchbacks

Our final shot of the day was this fantastic photo of the aforementioned trail bridge. We pulled the truck to the side of the road. There is little room for this, but we did it anyway. The shot is awesome and makes me want to jump back in the truck and go ride it again and again.

We really hope that this particular trail will eventually connect to the Chattahoochee Riverwalk Bike Trail which runs from Fort Benning in the south to Lake Oliver Marina in the north.

The last eight miles of the trail from Mulberry Creek to the Columbus/Muscogee County line is scheduled to be completed during 2026/2027 and funded by TSPLOST funds when they become available.

~Harris County, GA

If and when these trails ever connect it will be one of the best longer rail-trail rides in the Southeastern United States, but if and when that happens, who knows. The Man O’ War trail just finished construction on their Phase VI plans (which are the photos we have above at the turnaround point). These trails, especially longer connected trails like Chief Ladiga in Alabama-Georgia, and the many options like they have in Ohio, are much needed and provide a great value to the communities. With so many roads lacking infrastructure for safe bike riding, these trails remove the conflicts between bikes and cars and make for a much safer ride.

I hope you find this ride report useful and can make it to this one. It is one of the best rail trail rides in this part of the country to be sure.

As with many of our posts, if you would like to see the full high res versions of they are available on our Flickr gallery Man O’ War Railroad Bike Trail Ride Report.