The Crew Behind One of Iowa's Best Barbecue Joints Just Broke Ground on the State's Most Famous Trail

Iowa's most famous piece of trail is a half-mile bridge that glows blue over the Des Moines River, and this month a barbecue crew decided to plant a smoker at the end of it. On Tuesday, September 8, a team of Iowa pitmasters and local leaders broke ground on Boxcar BBQ, a new restaurant rising along South Highway 210 in Slater, a few steps from the High Trestle Trail. The shovels were ceremonial. The intent behind them is not.

The people holding those shovels are not first-timers hoping a barbecue joint might work. They are the crew behind Whatcha Smokin, one of the most-loved smoke stops in central Iowa, and they are betting that the state's signature recreation trail is exactly where the next one belongs.

That bet is the whole story here. Barbecue is often framed as a Southern birthright, but its newest American growth is happening in places like a farm town on an Iowa bike trail, where a proven crew is turning a stretch of old railroad into a reason to stop and eat.

The Crew Doing the Building

Boxcar BBQ is being built by names central Iowa already trusts. The lead partner is Tanya Doyle, co-founder of Whatcha Smokin BBQ and of BFE Vintage Motorcycles, who has spent years turning small Iowa buildings into places people drive out of their way for. She is joined by Paul Babberl, the well-known Iowa pitmaster who ran the pits at Whatcha Smokin for years, and by Morgan Johnson, who grew up in Slater and helped lead both Whatcha Smokin and Flight Bar and Grille.

The choice of town was deliberate, and personal. Johnson's roots are in Slater, and Doyle framed the location as a matter of community as much as commerce. The crew chose the site for its strong sense of community and its connection to the High Trestle Trail, she said at the groundbreaking, calling the goal a place where neighbors, families, and visitors can come together over great food.

Local officials read it the same way. Slater Mayor Taylor Christensen called the project a welcome investment in Slater's future, pointing to the trail as an opening to serve both residents and the visitors who roll through town on two wheels. A groundbreaking rarely draws a mayor unless the town believes it matters.

A Track Record, Not a Gamble

The reason those quotes carry weight is what this crew already built. Whatcha Smokin BBQ and Brew opened in 2017 inside an old gas station on the edge of Luther, Iowa, a speck of a town that sits on the same High Trestle Trail the new project will anchor. Doyle and her partner had spent about a decade running establishments together around Ames before they turned a filling station into a barbecue stop, and the gamble paid off in a following that treats the drive as part of the fun.

The kitchen backed up the location. Whatcha Smokin has become a fixture of the new-food lineup at the Iowa State Fair, the kind of stage where a small-town smokehouse gets judged against the whole state. Its fair run has included the Iowa Twinkie, the Iowa Sm'Oak'ed Roll, and the Three Little Pigs, the last of them built by Babberl, the pitmaster who has been there since day one and the creative engine behind the menu's stranger, better ideas.

The awards followed the crowds. Whatcha Smokin took top honors in the Iowa Pork Producers Association's Pulled Pork Madness contest, winning out of a field of 125 nominees, a bracket-style statewide vote that doubles as a popularity contest and a quality check. A crew that can win a statewide pulled-pork bracket and headline the state fair is not guessing about whether Iowans will drive for barbecue. It already knows they will.

The Trail That Makes the Corner

What makes the Slater site more than another storefront is the trail running past its door. The High Trestle Trail is a 25-mile rail-trail that opened on April 30, 2011, stitched together after Union Pacific moved to abandon the old Woodward-to-Ankeny line and the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation stepped in to buy the corridor in 2005 rather than let it disappear. Slater is one of the towns strung along it.

Its centerpiece is a genuine landmark. The trail's half-mile bridge stands 13 stories above the Des Moines River, wrapped in 43 twisting, diamond-shaped steel frames lit by LED lights that were designed to feel like traveling down a mine shaft, a nod to the area's coal history. The artwork, by Iowa artist David Dahlquist, has collected architecture and lighting honors since it went up. From spring through fall the bridge is lit from sunset to midnight, and it draws cyclists, walkers, and photographers from far past Iowa. It ranks among the largest trail bridges in the world. The old line once carried coal and freight, and now it carries the appetite of everyone who crosses it.

That is the customer base Boxcar is building for. A recreation trail with a bucket-list bridge is a steady current of hungry people moving on their own power, the exact crowd a smoker wants downwind. Trail-side dining has quietly become one of the surest bets in food, and the Whatcha Smokin crew already proved the model once, at the other end of this very trail.

Why a Bike Trail Grows Barbecue

There is a bigger pattern under the local news. Barbecue's American map is no longer drawn only through Texas and the Carolinas. It is spreading into destination corners, small towns and trail towns and river towns, where a good pit becomes the reason a place is worth the trip. A groundbreaking on an Iowa bike trail is a small, concrete version of that shift.

It also says something about how barbecue grows now. It does not always arrive as a splashy big-city opening with a celebrity name over the door. Often it comes the way Boxcar is coming, from a trusted regional crew widening its footprint one town over, betting that the same food that filled an old gas station will fill a new build beside a famous bridge.

The gathering-place idea is the through-line. Doyle talked about neighbors and families coming together over great food, and that is the oldest thing barbecue does, long before it was a competition circuit or a streaming genre. A fire, a crowd, and a reason to linger. Set that next to a glowing trail bridge and the reason to linger takes care of itself. A rider who pedaled out to see the bridge now has a reason to stay for dinner, and a town that was a waypoint becomes a destination.

What Comes Next

For now the site is a groundbreaking, not a grand opening. The partners say additional details about construction and an anticipated opening date will be announced as the project progresses, so the smoke is still a season or two off. What is settled is the direction: a decorated Iowa barbecue crew, a farm town that wanted them, and a trail built to carry people right to the door.

If the Whatcha Smokin story is any guide, the drive will be the point. A crew turned a shuttered gas station in Luther into a place Iowans plan a day around. Now they are doing it again down the line in Slater, and this time the parking lot comes with a half-mile of glowing steel. Barbecue keeps finding new ground, and some of the best of it is a bike ride away.

Sources

• Boxcar BBQ Breaks Ground at a New Restaurant in Slater (Ames Regional Economic Alliance, Sept 10 2026: Sept 8 groundbreaking, South Highway 210 site adjacent to the High Trestle Trail, partners Tanya Doyle / Paul Babberl / Morgan Johnson and their backgrounds, Doyle and Mayor Taylor Christensen quotes, opening date to be announced)

• A pork BBQ paradise (Iowa Farm Bureau: Whatcha Smokin BBQ and Brew opened 2017 in a former gas station on the edge of Luther, Iowa; owners' prior decade of Ames establishments)

• Whatcha Smokin BBQ and Brew (Discover Ames: the Luther, Iowa barbecue-and-brew destination on the High Trestle Trail)

• Iowa State Fair best new fair food finalist: Whatcha Smokin's Three Little Pigs (We Are Iowa: Whatcha Smokin's repeated State Fair new-food runs, the Iowa Twinkie and Iowa Sm'Oak'ed Roll, and pitmaster Paul Babberl as the creator behind the Three Little Pigs)

• Iowa Pork crowns Pulled Pork Madness champion (National Hog Farmer / Iowa Pork Producers Association: Whatcha Smokin winning Pulled Pork Madness out of a field of 125 nominees)

• High Trestle Trail (Wikipedia: the 25-mile rail-trail, April 30 2011 opening, the half-mile bridge among the largest trail bridges in the world)

• High Trestle Trail (Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation: Union Pacific line abandonment and INHF's 2005 purchase of the corridor)

• High Trestle Trail (Polk County Conservation: the bridge standing 13 stories above the Des Moines River)

• High Trestle Trail Bridge (Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation: David Dahlquist's 43 diamond-shaped steel frames and LED lighting evoking a mine shaft)

Images courtesy the Ames Regional Economic Alliance / Boxcar BBQ and the Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation.