March 8, 2024
Coming Soon
Signs went up recently at the Gorge Road intersection with Black Diamond and the Jacksonville Road parking lot. Substantial improvements are coming by the end of 2025! Trail resurfacing and erosion control are welcome enhancements, as the trail can suffer from rain, snow, and rapid thaw/freeze cycles.
The new 74-spot trailhead parking lot will be accessed from Gorge Road. A path will connect directly to Black Diamond just north of its intersection with Gorge Road, and patrons can walk a short distance to the left to access the bridge across the north gorge of Taughannock Falls State Park, linking up with the 3-mile gorge trail.
Site plan
The sign also touts a four-season restroom, welcome news for anyone who enjoys hiking, running, skiing, or snowshoeing on Black Diamond during the winter.
Bathroom rendition
Trail bridge improvements are on the way, which will rehabilitate the railroad trestle bridge spanning the gorge. It currently has areas of crumbling concrete and a chain link fence. The Jacksonville Road parking lot will be allowed to return to its natural vegetated state.
July 16, 2024
Black Diamond Trail Access Closed
I spoke with Bill Hughes at Taughannock Park this morning. The Jacksonville Road parking lot is closed for a week. After that time (and since it’s a contractor, July 23 may be fungible), half of the parking lot will be available again and the other half will be used for construction staging. During this week, all access from that parking lot to BDT is closed, so reroute along Jacksonville Road and Gorge Road to get to BDT. When the lot re-opens, the access to BDT will not be along the current path, but instead along the footpath at the top of the bridge that crosses the gorge. I made a video to show what that looks like. It should be fairly clear with fencing when it is completed, too.
July 26, 2024
The Jacksonville Road parking lot is open again. The access from the parking lot to the trail is also available, though I’m not sure if they’ll be changing that, but they’ll have a short reroute when they do. The area for the new parking lot off Gorge Road is totally cleared of trees and debris, though stumps remain.
Jacksonville Road parking lot reopened
September 6, 2024
There's a lot of excavation progress in the parking lot area off of Gorge Road, including a pad for what I presume will be the structure adjacent to the parking lot.
Excavation progress
The path that connects the Jacksonville parking lot to the Black Diamond Trail is ringed by tall semi-permanent fencing, in preparation for what I presume will be closure of that path. As noted above, the plan is to connect Black Diamond to the rim trail via the singletrack footpath that goes off to the right.
Semi-permanent fencing
There's a huge pile of dirt, presumably excavated from the new parking lot area, in the Jacksonville Road lot. The lot appears to be halved by that same semi-permanent fencing, so if you plan to start your day from that end of the park, be prepared for low (or no) capacity in that lot, depending on the day and time you arrive.
That's a dirt pile!