After 48 Years, Sandy Springs' River Trails Finally Have Names

"This is a very historic moment for our organization."

That's how Brittany Jones, executive director of the Chattahoochee National Park Conservancy, described a ribbon-cutting that most Sandy Springs residents drove past this July without knowing what it meant. The event was quiet. The implications are not. For the first time since President Jimmy Carter established the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in 1978, the trails inside it have names.

If you've hiked Island Ford before, you know what I mean when I say the paths there used to just exist. You followed the dirt because other people had followed the dirt before you, down toward the river, along the bluff, back up to the parking lot. No signs told you which fork led where. That changed this summer, and the reason it changed says something bigger about where Sandy Springs' whole trail network is headed.

A 48-year-old park finally gets a map

The Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area stretches 48 miles along the river between Atlanta and Lake Sidney Lanier, spread across 15 park units and roughly 7,000 acres. Three of those units sit inside Sandy Springs: Island Ford, East Palisades, and Powers Island, covering about 22 miles of riverfront. It ranks among the 30 most-visited units in the entire National Park System, pulling in more than 3 million visitors a year. And until this July, not one foot of trail inside it had an official name.

That's not a small oversight. A park pulling in more than 3 million visitors a year, with no named trails until this summer, means most of those visitors have been navigating by memory, word of mouth, or trial and error. It also means informal shortcuts kept forming under all that unmarked foot traffic, cutting new paths into slopes that were never built to hold them. That's part of why this summer's project spent so much of its budget on erosion control instead of just adding mileage.

What actually changed at Island Ford this summer

The project that closed Island Ford's trails from January 5 through this summer wasn't a repaving job. It was a full realignment, led by the National Park Service in partnership with the Chattahoochee National Park Conservancy, and it did three specific things. Originally expected to wrap by spring, the work didn't actually finish until the July 1 ribbon-cutting, a few months later than planned.

First, it added trail mileage. Rough Draft Atlanta reported the increase at roughly 50 percent. The Conservancy's own figures describe the network growing from about 4.8 miles to nearly 7, while Axios pegged the new total closer to 6.4 miles. The exact number depends on who's counting, but every source agrees on the shape of it: Island Ford's trail system got meaningfully bigger in a single project. Second, it added two new pedestrian bridges and replaced a badly eroded downhill approach to the river with a set of concrete stairs built to handle stormwater and heavy foot traffic. Third, and this is the detail that matters most for anyone who actually uses the park, it gave every trail a name for the first time.

Jones put a number on what it took to get there.

"The Island Ford trails project represents the largest single project in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. It's coming in just shy of half a million dollars. The lessons we have learned here will help shape future trail improvements across the entire park."

That last line is the one worth sitting with. Island Ford wasn't treated as a one-off fix. It was the first test case for a park-wide plan that calls for 33 new miles of trail across all 15 units, a 50 percent increase system-wide, including pedestrian-only paths, multi-use bike routes, and ADA-accessible segments. K. Lynn Berry, the recreation area's new superintendent, called the reopened trails "a cornerstone of the visitor experience" and said the goal was to strengthen the park's foundation "for years to come," not just patch what was already there.

If you hike here regularly, this is the year the park stopped being a collection of worn footpaths and started becoming a designed system. The Hewlett Lodge Visitor Center at Island Ford, the recreation area's headquarters, is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. if you want to see the new trail map in person before you head out.

The city is stitching its own trails together at the same time

Here's where the story gets bigger than one national park unit. While the Park Service was renaming trails at Island Ford, the Sandy Springs Conservancy, a citizen-led nonprofit, was pushing forward on a separate but related project a few miles away at Morgan Falls Overlook Park: the Morgan Falls Loop, part of the city's broader Sandy Springs Springway trail plan.

The first piece, Segment 2A, was finished in early 2025: a 1.88-mile route of paved trail and raised boardwalk that crosses Orkin Lake and connects Morgan Falls Overlook Park to Cimarron Parkway and Roswell Road. It cost $8.5 million, funded largely through a $3 million Georgia Outdoor Stewardship grant plus a $30,000 community contribution from the Conservancy, and took a little over two years from a December 2022 groundbreaking to finished railings and lighting.

Now the Conservancy is working with city staff, the PATH Foundation, and Kaizen Collaborative on the next piece, Segment 2C, which would extend the loop from its current 1.8 miles to about 3.4 miles, following a tributary of the Chattahoochee past rock outcroppings and small waterfalls before connecting to Roswell Road. The full vision is a continuous 5.6-mile loop around the park. City council is expected to consider funding for that segment before the end of the year.

Put the two projects side by side and the pattern is obvious. A federal agency renamed and expanded trails at Island Ford. A city nonprofit is trying to link neighborhoods to the river at Morgan Falls. Different jurisdictions, different budgets, same underlying goal: turning a patchwork of green space that residents already loved into something that actually connects.

Where to actually go this fall

With the Island Ford closures behind us and cooler weather on the way, here's how the pieces break down if you're deciding where to spend a Saturday morning.

One thing worth knowing before you go: Big Trees is a Fulton County property, not part of the National Park Service's recreation area, which is why it already had named trails long before Island Ford caught up. Different owner, different timeline, same river.

A couple of practical notes if you're heading out this fall. Dogs are welcome throughout the recreation area but must stay on a six-foot leash, a rule the Conservancy has been actively reminding visitors about given how much foot and paw traffic the park sees. And if you're picking Morgan Falls Overlook Park for a gathering, know that amplified sound and live music aren't permitted there, so it's a better fit for a quiet picnic than a party.

The bigger takeaway isn't just that a few miles of dirt got graded and labeled. It's that Sandy Springs' green space, for the first time in a long while, is being treated as one connected system instead of a handful of separate parks that happen to share a zip code. Island Ford got there first. Morgan Falls is a few years behind but headed the same direction. If you've lived here long enough to remember guessing your way down to the river, this is the fall to go find out what the trails are actually called.

If you're weighing a move into this part of Sandy Springs, or already live here and are curious what a home near this trail network is worth, I'd love to talk through it with you. Homes by Emily Kelly is a phone call away. Let's Connect.