LISBON, Ohio -- The trail is billed as one of the coolest in all of Ohio.

The Little Beaver Creek Greenway Trail might just be one of the most temperature-friendly rail trails in Ohio. Most rail trails are wide open and sunny, very hot in July and August. But the Greenway Trail is heavy on trees, so it's five to 10 degrees cooler in the shade on summer days.

The trail -- 10 feet wide and paved with asphalt -- stretches 10 miles from the village of Lisbon north to the village of Leetonia in eastern Ohio's Columbiana County.

It follows the route of the old Erie Lackawanna Railroad. The line was previously used by the Erie Railroad and the Mahoning Valley Railway.

The trail goes along the very pretty Middle Fork of Little Beaver Creek, a federal and state wild/scenic stream, in a mini-valley that the creek has cut.

It's one of three Ohio streams in the federal system, along with the Little Miami River and the Big Darby-Little Darby creeks. It was the first stream designated for the state system. Thirty-six miles of stream were honored for wild or scenic attributes.

The rail trail -- it is managed by the Columbiana County Park District -- passes farms, fields, heavy forests, backyards with caged rabbits and chained dogs. There are 30-foot-high sandstone cliffs and wild-looking gorges.

At times, you are 100 feet above Little Beaver Creek. At other times, you are pedaling at stream level.

You can even hop off the trail to visit a historic covered bridge. The Centennial bridge on Eagleton Road at Teegarden was built in 1875 and used until 1992. It is 67 feet long and built of white oak. It is one of five remaining covered bridges in Columbiana County.

You also pedal past a small wooden building that was the Sheldon's Grove ticket station back in railroad days.

Closer to Lisbon, you will pass the McKinley House where President William McKinley's grandparents once lived. It is off Logtown Road.

At Leetonia, you can visit the old beehive coke ovens that were used from 1866 to the 1930s to produce steel. The complex, with 200 old ovens, was built by the Leetonia Iron and Coal Co. and later run by the Cherry Valley Iron and Coal Co.

The facility, one of the largest of its kind in the country, is maintained by local Boy Scouts. It is off Logtown Road.

Lisbon is a pretty, historic place. It was founded in 1803 and is the second oldest town in Ohio. Its downtown buildings date to the early 1800s and represent Federal, Empire and Victorian styles.

There are five trailheads:

• On state Route 164 at South Lincoln Avenue in Lisbon.

• West of Lisbon on St. Jacob-Logtown Road. It can be reached off Lincoln Way (U.S. 30).

• Off Eagleton Road north of Lisbon. Take state Route 45 north from Lisbon for five miles. Turn left (west) on Teegarden Road. Proceed two miles. Turn left on Eagleton.

• Off state Route 558 near Old Route 344 at New Franklin and just south of Leetonia.

• Off state Route 344 in Leetonia.

Amenities along the Greenway Trail are limited: a few benches and picnic tables, portable toilets and a handful of interpretive signs.

In fact, the trail goes on the road for a short stretch near Lisbon and a directional sign or paint on the pavement would have been helpful to point bicyclists in the right direction.

Trail users are fenced in for long sections -- sometimes on one side of the trail only and sometimes on both.

Helmets are recommended. No pets or horses are allowed, and do not trespass on the private property on both sides of the trail.

The Little Beaver Creek Greenway Trail was in the discussion stages starting in 1990. Construction began in late 1999 and the trail opened in 2000.

For information about the Greenway Trail, contact the Columbia County Park District at 130 Maple St., Lisbon 44432, 330-424-9078. You can also check out http://www.bicycletrail.com/gwt-home.htm. Nearby is Guilford Lake State Park, which has an interesting history.

Today there is a 396-acre lake, but the park about seven miles west of Lisbon off state Route 172 started out as a swamp and then became a canal reservoir. It was later drained by farmers.

The lake was originally created in 1834 to provide water for the Sandy & Beaver Canal.

That canal ran 73.5 miles from Bolivar in northern Tuscarawas County east to East Liverpool on the Ohio River. It connected to the Ohio & Erie Canal at Bolivar. It included 30 dams, 90 locks, two tunnels and a 400-foot-long aqueduct.

E.H. Gill was the chief engineer for the canal and a town was named in his honor. He built a road through the wetland that was known as Gill's Ford.

But when the town in 1874 applied for a Grange charter, its name was misspelled as Guilford. Rather than wait for a corrected charter, the locals simply accepted the new name.

The canal went bankrupt. The lake was drained and farmers used the bottomlands.

The state acquired the site on the West Fork of Little Beaver Creek in 1927 and rebuilt the dam in 1932. It became a state park in 1949.

The park has day-use areas and a campground with 41 sites around the lake. There is a 600-foot-long sandy beach on the northwest side of the lake. There is also picnicking.

For park information, contact Guilford Lake State Park at 6835 East Lake Road, Lisbon 44432, 330-222-1712. Or go to http://www.ohiodnr.com. Six miles south of Lisbon off state Route 518, you will find the monument that marks the surrender site of Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan.

Morgan and his cavalry surrendered on July 26, 1863, after a daring raid that marked the Confederates' northernmost strike during the Civil War.

If you are looking for another pedaling spot east of Akron, head for the Mill Creek MetroParks Bikeway in Mahoning County.

The 11-mile paved bikeway is on the same abandoned railroad as the Greenway Trail in Columbiana County. The two trails are eight miles apart.

The Mahoning trail runs from Western Reserve Road in Canfield Township to the Mahoning-Trumbull County line in Austintown Township.

You can hop on at trailheads at the MetroParks farm in Canfield Township, and at Kirk Road and Mahoning Avenue, both in Austintown Township.

The line was built in the 1860s as the Niles and Lisbon Branch of the Erie Railroad Co. and served as a key link between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Passenger service was discontinued in the 1930s. The tracks and ties were removed in 1989.

The north-south bikeway, built with federal and state grants, opened in 2000.

It is popular with bicyclists, walkers and in-line skaters.

Surrounded by suburban development, it doesn't have the same rustic feel as the Columbiana County trail.

Sites along the trail include the 154-acre Sawmill Creek Preserve and the 402-acre MetroParks Farm in Canfield, with classrooms, displays and agricultural exhibits.

The Columbiana and Mahoning trails are part of the 100-mile Great Ohio Lake to River Greenway that will link Lake Erie to the Ohio River when it is completed.

For information, contact Mill Creek MetroParks at P.O. Box 596, Canfield, OH 44406, 330-702-3000. You can also check out http://www.millcreekmetroparks.com.