If you walk the Towpath every week, you already know the trail doesn't feel like 26 miles of open path so much as one long, quiet hallway. There aren't a dozen ways in and out. There are a handful of trailheads, a couple of parallel stretches, and otherwise you're committed to whatever direction you picked at the start. That design has worked fine for decades. This year it got tested twice: once already, and once still coming.
The first disruption already happened. A contractor started work near the Craig Pittman Trailhead down in Navarre on June 24, with the Ohio & Erie Canalway's alert page warning of periodic closures for several weeks after that. If you hit orange barricades on a run sometime this summer, that's why, and the work has likely wrapped by now. The second disruption is still ahead of you and it's a bigger one: the sixth annual Haunted Forest Marathon takes over long sections of the towpath on Sunday, October 25, still about two months out from today. One was a slow-moving inconvenience that came and went. The other is a planned, hours-long occupation of the corridor you use to walk the dog. Knowing the difference between the two, and knowing where the trail actually lets you step off and around a problem, is what separates a five-minute adjustment from a wasted trip.
The trail has almost no shoulders
Part of what makes the Craig Pittman closure worth paying attention to is that this section of the towpath doesn't have much slack. Just north of the trailhead there's a vehicle crossing where kayakers get dropped off and picked up from the river, so the corridor is already narrow and shared with traffic before construction ever showed up. South of Craig Pittman, the trail runs nearly 6.5 miles along the Tuscarawas River toward Bolivar with no services and, per the Ohio & Erie Canalway's own trail guide, "no trailside services between Navarre and Bolivar." That's fine on a normal day. It's a longer walk back to the car on a day when a section is barricaded and you didn't know it going in.
The one real workaround in this part of the county is the Olde Muskingum Trail, which runs parallel to the towpath on the opposite side of the Tuscarawas River for close to six miles between Forty Corners and Cherry Street in Canal Fulton. It's the same reason equestrians use it: horses aren't permitted on the Massillon section of the towpath itself, so riders are routed onto the Muskingum side instead. If you're on foot or a bike and the main trail is blocked near Navarre or Massillon, that river-crossing swap at Forty Corners or Butterbridge Road is basically the only detour that exists. Miss that junction and you're turning around.
What's actually at each trailhead
Regulars already know this, but it's worth having in one place, because half the value of the towpath is knowing which stop actually has what you need:
- Lake Ave. Trailhead (Massillon) has the most built-in support on the whole Stark County stretch: Ernie's Bike Shop for rentals and repairs, Second Sole Footwear, a canoe livery, and the Blue Heron Deli, all within steps of the trail.
- Craig Pittman Trailhead (Navarre) is built for horse trailers, with tie lines and mounting blocks, plus a portable restroom and a permanent one across Hudson Drive in Navarre-Bethlehem Park.
- St. Helena Heritage Park (Canal Fulton) is the one most people picture when they think "downtown towpath." It's got the seasonal Canalway Visitors Center, canal boat access, and restaurants a block away in downtown Canal Fulton.
- Butterbridge Road is the crossover point for the Olde Muskingum Trail and has parking large enough for horse trailers on the west side of the river.
- Lock 4 Trailhead sits just south of downtown Canal Fulton and includes a bike repair station and an accessible fishing dock at the old canal lock itself, the fourth south of the Summit County line.
None of that is dramatic. It's just the difference between a trip that goes smoothly and one where you find out the hard way that the trailhead you picked doesn't have a bathroom.
The quieter reward: what's actually along this stretch
The construction and the marathon are both disruptions, but they're temporary. What doesn't change is the reason people keep coming back to this particular stretch. Near Navarre, the trail runs close enough to Nickles Bakery that regulars talk about catching the smell of baking bread as they pass behind the building. A little farther south, the sycamores near Riverland Avenue are tall enough to hold Pileated Woodpeckers, and birders near Butterbridge Road at dusk have a decent shot at hearing Barred Owl activity. None of that shows up on a map. It's the kind of detail you only pick up from walking the same three miles often enough to notice what's different about them.
Then the marathon takes the whole thing over
The Haunted Forest Marathon isn't a small local fun run anymore. This year's race, its sixth, starts on Erie Street in downtown Canal Fulton on the morning of Sunday, October 25, with a full marathon, half marathon, and 5K all launching from St. Helena Heritage Park. The half is a straightforward out-and-back to the 6.5-mile mark and back. Marathoners keep going, adding another 6.5-mile stretch north before turning around, which means for several hours that morning, long sections of the towpath in both directions from downtown Canal Fulton are functioning as a race course, not a place to walk the dog.
The organizers lean into the Halloween theme hard, with course decorations and a "Smash the PR Pumpkin" tradition for anyone who sets a personal best, and the race has built a real reputation as a Boston qualifier: 18% of the 2025 marathon field hit their qualifying time on a course with a total elevation gain of just 57 feet over 26.2 miles. That flatness is exactly why it draws serious runners from outside the county, which is also exactly why regular trail users need to plan around it rather than be surprised by it.
It's not the only race the towpath hosts. Back on July 25, Northwest High School's community turned out for the Kevin Peck Memorial 5K at St. Helena Heritage Park, a race named for a 1998 Northwest grad and state-qualifying runner who died in 2011, with proceeds supporting a scholarship for a Northwest cross country or distance athlete who improved the most over their career, not necessarily the fastest kid on the team. That race came and went with a fraction of the disruption the marathon brings, mostly because it's shorter and stays closer to the park. The contrast between the two is a decent way to think about the towpath generally: small local races barely register, but anything measured in double-digit miles is going to close the corridor down for a stretch, because there's nowhere else for that many runners to go.
The takeaway for anyone who actually uses this trail
None of this is really about construction schedules or race logistics. It's about understanding that the towpath behaves less like a park with a dozen entrances and more like a single road with a few known off-ramps. When one section closes, whether for a contractor crew near Craig Pittman or a marathon field moving through St. Helena Heritage Park, your options are the same short list every time: wait it out, use the Olde Muskingum crossover at Forty Corners or Butterbridge, or pick a different morning. Knowing that list ahead of time is the whole difference between a minor annoyance and standing at a barricade wondering how you're getting back to your car.
If you're weighing a move somewhere along this stretch of Stark County and want a neighbor's read on what daily life actually looks like here, past the trail closures and race weekends, Casey Roch and the team at RE/MAX Infinity know Canal Fulton because they live in it too. Reach out when you're ready for a conversation grounded in what it's actually like to be here, not just what the listing photos show.
