At the end of the 19th century, the exploitation of various iron deposits in the town of Ojos Negros was granted to a pair of Basque businessmen who founded the Compañía Minera de Sierra Menera on 3 September 1900. Due to the quantity and quality of the mineral extracted, they decided to request a licence to build a cheap railway (narrow gauge) to transport the mineral to the port of Sagunto. They decided to build this line due to various disagreements with the directors of the Ferrocarril central de Aragón which covered the current line between Sagunto and Teruel and which runs almost parallel and sometimes less than a hundred metres away. This fact meant that, given the need for greater transport capacity, the route of the Sierra Menera railway was abandoned on 29 July 1972.
Later, the Aragonese government did the same on its part of the route. The Ojos Negros Green Route between Teruel and the Valencian coast is the longest Green Route in Spain to date. Due to its length, 160 km, it has been divided into two sections, the first with two variants here in the Valencian Community and the second that runs through Aragon.
The Palancia River Valley is the setting for the stage that passes through our community, on the Sierra Menera mining railway. From the Barracas plateau, at the foot of the Sierra de Javalambre, the Ojos Negro Green Route descends to the rich Valencian orchards on the shores of the Mediterranean in two variants, one that reaches Castellón and another that reaches Algimia de Alfara.
Valencia
35 km to Torres-Torres/Algimia
Castellón
50 km to Segorbe
Teruel
55 km to Barracas
Surface
Asphalt and compacted gravel