page_title: Minuteman Bikeway
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Minuteman Bikeway / History
caption_attribution_description: Topographic maps of Arlington, Belmont, and Lexington, Massachusetts, as of 1946. Also includes much of Winchester.
context_page_description: The Minuteman Bikeway is a 10-mile paved multi-use rail trail located in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts. It runs from Bedford to Alewife station, at the northern end of the Red Line in Cambridge, passing through the towns of Lexington and Arlington along the way. Also along the route are several notable regional sites, including Alewife Brook Reservation, Spy Pond, "Arlington’s Great Meadows", the Battle Green in Lexington, and Hanscom Air Force Base.
  At its Cambridge terminus, the bikeway connects with four other bike paths:
  the Fitchburg Cutoff Path
  the Cambridge Linear Park which, in turn, leads to the Somerville Community Path.
  the Alewife Brook Greenway, a connection to the Mystic River bike path, following Alewife Brook. The Alewife Brook extension received $4M from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as the "Minuteman Bikepath Connector" project.
  a sidewalk path to Fresh Pond Reservation.
  Plans are underway to extend the Somerville Community Path to downtown Boston, which would create a much larger continuous bikeway accessible from the Minuteman.
context_section_description: The path comprising the current Minuteman Bikeway has a long history. The trail closely approximates the route that Paul Revere took on his famous ride in 1775, which heralded the beginning of the American Revolution.
  Along the way to becoming a railroad, the path's right-of-way was laid out east of Lexington in 1846 by the Lexington and West Cambridge Railroad and west of Lexington in 1873 by the Middlesex Central Railroad.
  Railbanking of the line was first proposed in 1974, three years before passenger rail service was discontinued, and a full seven years before rail service was discontinued altogether (in 1981). In 1991, the final plan for the conversion was approved, and construction started on the original section of the bikeway. The Arlington–Lexington section of the path was dedicated in September 1992; the Lexington–Bedford segment was delayed by water main construction and opened in May 1993. In 1998, the bikeway was extended a short distance from East Arlington to Alewife station in Cambridge. 
  In 2002 it was repaved in Arlington and in 2004 the Bedford Depot Park Enhancement Project was completed at its western terminus. In 2008, the bikeway was the fifth inductee into the national Rail-Trail Hall of Fame by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.
  The property is currently owned by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and leased to the municipalities through which it passes on an interim basis. The MBTA at one point planned to use this right-of-way to extend the Red Line to Arlington Center and Arlington Heights.
  Beginning in Spring 2015, the crossing of the path through Arlington Center is expected to be rebuilt to be less discontinuous.
caption: Map from 1946, where Boston & Maine Railroad (B&M) passes along the route of today's Minuteman Bikeway
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