NEW ROCHELLE, NY (October 12, 2025) — The Thomas Paine Cottage Museum will greet runners and spectators for the Paine to Pain Trail Half Marathon later this morning, with a special exhibit available before the start.
“The race is on! All runners and spectators, the weather is holding and the Paine Cottage will be opened for viewing of the Paine to Pain Trail Half Marathon exhibit before the race start,” the museum announced in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The exhibit will be available from 8 to 9 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 12, ahead of the event’s start. A welcome banner at the site will read: “Welcome Runners Paine to Pain Trail Half Marathon Thomas Paine Cottage Museum The Huguenot & New Rochelle Historical Association.”
The museum, managed by the Huguenot & New Rochelle Historical Association, will feature colonial-era displays, including a costumed figure in period attire waving to participants near the cottage grounds.
Organizers will highlight the event with the hashtag #PaineToPain, drawing attention to the historic trail run connecting Paine’s legacy.
The Paine to Pain Trail, a 13.1-mile loop weaving through Westchester County’s wooded parks and historic paths, traces its roots to a grassroots effort in the late 1990s to connect fragmented green spaces into a unified recreational network.
The trail’s story begins in 1999 when Eric Turkewitz, a local runner, relocated to Westchester and started mapping informal trails in New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Scarsdale, Eastchester, and county-owned lands. These paths, including spots like Leatherstocking Trail and Saxon Woods, were disconnected and unmapped, forcing runners to navigate roads or gaps between parks. By 2001, Turkewitz had linked them into a makeshift 13-mile training loop for marathon preparation. He shared his vision with New Rochelle City Councilman Noam Bramson—who later became mayor—sparking official interest. Around the same time, Mamaroneck Town Councilwoman Nancy Seligson was independently advocating for a broader trail system.
Turkewitz’s Sound Shore Runners and Multisport Club (later rebranded as NewRo Runners) pledged to host a half-marathon once a key “missing link” between Leatherstocking Trail and Saxon Woods was completed. The Leatherstocking Trail itself, the loop’s foundational 2.7-mile segment from New Rochelle to Mamaroneck, originated from land originally reserved for a roadway to a proposed bridge across Long Island Sound. When the bridge plans fizzled after Interstate 95’s construction, the strip was repurposed as a nature trail.
Over the next six years, planning involved countless meetings with municipalities, environmental coordinators, and volunteers. A breakthrough came on December 3, 2005, when a crew built a new connector in Saxon Woods, slashing a hazardous half-mile road stretch on Old White Plains Road to just 500 feet. The very next day, Turkewitz tested the full loop on fresh snow alongside runner Guillermo Gutierrez.
Challenges persisted: A fierce Nor’easter storm on April 15, 2007, flooded Leatherstocking Trail, demolishing a catwalk and toppling trees onto a bridge. Mamaroneck’s environmental coordinator, Elizabeth Paul, rallied Boy Scout troops for repairs, including a rebuilt bridge and fresh trail blazing with a distinctive star symbol. That winter, the Town of Mamaroneck added a gravel shoulder path, further minimizing road exposure.
By 2006, Westchester County secured $1.5 million in funding: $500,000 for a parallel trail along Pinebrook Boulevard to form a figure-8 extension, and $1 million for signage, mapping, storm recovery, and other enhancements. Connections were forged to the Hutchinson River Trail (a former bridle path), Twin Lakes Park in Eastchester, and Nature Study Woods in New Rochelle (an abandoned railway bed). These threads wove together the Colonial Greenway—a name honoring the area’s revolutionary-era heritage, including ties to author Thomas Paine, after whom the trail run is punningly named.
The Greenway’s soft opening unfolded on May 18, 2008, with more than 20 runners starting from the Thomas Paine Cottage, a national historic site on Paine’s old farmstead at the foot of Broadview Avenue. The official dedication followed on September 28, 2008, just before the inaugural Paine to Pain Trail Half-Marathon. Amid drizzly skies, Mayor Bramson cut the ribbon, and 50 participants launched with a colonial musket blast— a nod to the era’s spirit. The course kicks off with a steep climb up Broadview Avenue, immortalized in E.L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime, where the author once resided.
What began as a modest club event has ballooned into a regional staple, drawing over 700 runners by its fifth year and joining the Trail Mix Series of seven trail races across Westchester and Fairfield counties. Today, the 90% off-road route snakes through five parks, blending rugged terrain with historical echoes, from Paine’s revolutionary writings to the unbuilt bridge that gifted the land its second life. As Bramson once forecasted, the Colonial Greenway has emerged as a vital community asset, turning scattered paths into a enduring legacy of collaboration and endurance.
This article was drafted with the aid of Grok, an AI tool by xAI, under the direction and editing of Robert Cox to ensure accuracy and adherence to journalistic standards.