The trail opened in December 2025. The parking lot that makes the new section usable for anyone who doesn't live within walking distance didn't open until months later, confirmed by a Mecklenburg County project update dated May 21, 2026. If you drove out to the Highway 51 end of the McAlpine Creek Greenway sometime over the winter expecting a new place to park, you were five months early.
That gap between "the trail is open" and "the trail is reachable" is the part of this story that doesn't show up in the county's press-friendly framing, and it matters if you actually use this system instead of just reading about it. For years, the greenway that runs along McAlpine Creek, McMullen Creek and Four Mile Creek through the Pineville-Matthews Road corridor felt like two separate walks stitched together by a missing piece. That piece is now built. Whether it's fully usable the way most people expect a trailhead to be usable is a slightly different question, and one worth answering before you plan a Saturday around it.
The Gap That Finally Closed
The new section runs 1.1 miles, connecting the long-standing Johnston Road trailhead north to Highway 51, also known as Pineville-Matthews Road. It was built by contractor Eaglewood Inc. in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, with just under $5.8 million of the project's cost coming from NCDOT and the rest from Mecklenburg County's Capital Plan.
That funding split tells you something about the terrain. Nearly half the new mile sits on boardwalk, including one continuous stretch of 2,610 linear feet, one of the longest in the county's greenway system. Five separate boardwalks were built along the connector in total. A stream and wetland crossing of that length isn't cheap or fast to engineer, which is a reasonable explanation for why a project originally targeted for Fall 2025 completion slipped into December before it opened, and why the associated parking lot took even longer.
Once finished, the addition brought the connected McAlpine, McMullen and Four Mile Creek system to 7.5 miles, according to the county's own project page. For years, trail guides described this loop informally as somewhere near 6 miles. The new figure isn't a rounding difference. It's the real result of closing a gap that used to force an out-and-back walk instead of a through-route.
Trail Open, Trailhead Still Catching Up
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you're not paying close attention to the county's own updates rather than the initial opening announcement. The trail segment itself opened for use in December 2025. The new parking lot at 6810 Pineville-Matthews Road, built to hold 51 cars, wasn't confirmed open until the county's May 21, 2026 update, which also noted that wayfinding signage was still in production at that point.
| Before the connector | After the connector | |
|---|---|---|
| Connected trail length | Roughly 6 miles (informal estimate) | 7.5 miles (county figure) |
| Trailheads with parking | Johnston Road only | Johnston Road plus new Highway 51 lot |
| Highway 51 access | Roadside only, no dedicated lot | 51-space lot, confirmed open May 2026 |
| Signage at new trailhead | N/A | Still in production as of May 2026 |
If you tried this trail in January expecting a formal lot at the Highway 51 end, you'd have found construction, not parking. If you're trying it now, in late summer, the lot exists, but don't be surprised if wayfinding is still sparse. Bring the address rather than relying on signs to find your way in.
What You're Actually Walking Through
The Johnston Road side of the system starts with restrooms at the trailhead, at 11823 Johnston Road, and the first stretch under the Johnston Road bridge picks up the original character of this greenway: mixed gravel and paved surface, shaded creek corridor, occasional flooding after heavy rain. The McMullen Creek segment specifically opens onto a parking lot and picnic area across from McMullen Creek Marketplace, with the first three-quarters of a mile in pit gravel before it transitions to asphalt.
This stretch of floodplain isn't scenery filler. It's home to the first documented Great Blue Heron rookery in Mecklenburg County, and the tree canopy along the creek also shelters migratory species including the American Redstart and Scarlet Tanager. If you're the kind of resident who already knows to bring binoculars on a spring walk here, that hasn't changed. What has changed is that you can now keep walking past the old dead end instead of turning back.
One practical note carried over from before the extension: the boardwalk sections get slick when wet, and multiple trail reviewers have flagged falls after rain. That risk doesn't go away just because the boardwalk got longer. If anything, more linear feet of wet boardwalk is more linear feet to be careful on.
Two Real Ways In Now
Before this connector, most people treated Johnston Road as the only serious entry point. That's no longer accurate. As of the county's confirmation this spring, you have two functional trailheads instead of one:
- Johnston Road, at 11823 Johnston Road, the long-standing entry point with restrooms and the original parking area.
- Highway 51 / Pineville-Matthews Road, at 6810 Pineville-Matthews Road, the new 51-space lot directly across from McMullen Creek Marketplace, confirmed open as of the May 2026 county update.
For anyone who lives closer to Piper Glen or the Toringdon Circle area, additional parking near those neighborhoods has long served as an informal entry to the Four Mile Creek portion of the system, which runs east from Johnston Road. That access point isn't new, but it's more useful now that the whole horseshoe connects instead of requiring you to double back.
The Season To Actually Use It
This is the first full fall since the connector opened where residents can treat the whole system as one continuous route rather than two separate walks that happen to share a name. If you've been putting off checking out the Highway 51 end because the last time you looked there was a construction fence and no place to park, that's no longer the situation. If you're closer to Johnston Road and have never bothered walking north past the old boardwalk endpoint, there's now something on the other side worth reaching.
None of this changes the trail's basic character. It's still an easy, mostly flat walk best suited to families, dog walkers and casual runners rather than serious mileage seekers, and it still floods and gets crowded on weekends the way it always has. What changed is the map in your head. If you've lived in this part of south Charlotte for a while, the trail you remember is smaller than the one that exists now, and the easiest way to find out what that actually feels like is to park at the new lot and walk south instead of starting from Johnston Road like you always have.
If you're weighing a move within this stretch of south Charlotte, or you already live here and are thinking about what comes next, Ashley & Scott Sofsian know this corridor block by block, from the trailheads to the neighborhoods that back up to them. Schedule Your Consultation when you're ready to talk through what a home search or sale looks like in this part of the market.
