Ashland City's Trail Just Expanded. Not the Part You'd Expect.

If you've walked or biked the Cumberland River Bicentennial Trail this year, the trailhead off Chapmansboro Road probably looked the same as it always has. Same gravel lot. Same portable toilets. Same weathered sign describing four miles of pavement and two and a half miles of gravel, the same figures that have described the trail for years.

What actually changed sits at the far end, near a dam most people in Ashland City have never had a reason to walk to.

For most of 2025, the trail's southern tail past a stretch called Eagle Pass was closed. Riders who'd been coming for years mentioned it in trail reviews without much explanation, just a line noting you could no longer get through to the dam. That closure ended this spring, and the way it ended tells you something the trail's own signage still doesn't.

The piece that finished wasn't the one anyone was waiting on

Ask a longtime resident what's "next" for the trail and most will mention Tennessee Waltz Parkway or Johns Park, the town-side connections that would let someone start a walk from closer to Main Street instead of driving out to Chapmansboro Road first. Those are the pieces the town has been promising the longest.

Eagle Pass wasn't on that list. It's a former Tennessee Central Railroad corridor that TennGreen Land Conservancy bought back in 2000 and expanded again in 2011, holding it for over a decade as protected but not town-managed land. In December 2025, TennGreen handed both tracts over to Ashland City outright. By March 2026, the conservancy had made it official: continued public access, permanently, on a segment that connects the existing trail straight through to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Lock A recreation area on Cheatham Lake and Dam.

TennGreen's deputy director, Christie Henderson, put it plainly when the gift was announced: after more than a decade of owning and managing the land, the conservancy was ready to hand it to the town for good. Executive Director Alice Hudson Pell added that the segment connects people to the river, honors the corridor's rail history, and opens up land that could easily have been lost to development instead.

So the farthest, least central piece of the trail is now the most settled one. The parts closer to downtown are still paperwork.

What's still stuck, and for how long

At the December 9, 2025 town council meeting where the Eagle Pass donation was formally recognized, Ashland City officials also laid out where the two remaining phases stood. Parks and Recreation Director Anthony Clark told the council that Phase One, the segment connecting Marks Creek Trailhead to Tennessee Waltz Parkway, was expected to begin construction within two to three months. That puts a realistic groundbreaking window somewhere around February or March of this year.

Phase Two, the stretch linking the northern end of the bypass to Johns Park, is a longer story. Chief of Staff Allen Nicholson told the council that phase was still having its construction specifications reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act, a process he said typically runs six months to a year. Measured from December, that puts a plausible finish line for the review itself somewhere between mid-2026 and the end of the year, before any construction even starts.

Here's the part worth sitting with if you're planning a summer or fall route: the two phases everyone assumes are the priority, because they'd finally connect the trail to town, are the two still working through funding and federal review. The piece that's actually secured and open runs away from downtown, toward a dam.

If you haven't checked the trail's construction status since spring, it's worth a call to Ashland City Parks and Recreation before you plan a route that assumes Phase One is finished. The town's own trail page still lists the original four-mile-paved, two-and-a-half-mile-gravel description, unchanged since before any of this news broke. The map hasn't caught up to the land transfer yet, and there's no public update yet confirming whether Phase One broke ground on schedule.

There's a longer ambition behind all of this, too. At a January 2026 meeting, Ashland City officials sat down with representatives from the City of Clarksville to talk about linking their trail systems. First Ward Councilman Tony Young told the Cheatham County Exchange that connecting trails from Clarksville all the way to Nashville was the plan from the beginning, going back to when the original corridor was first laid out. Eagle Pass and the two pending phases are pieces of that much bigger idea, not standalone projects.

Downtown didn't wait for the trail to catch up

While the trail's in-town connections sit in review, downtown Ashland City has been building its own momentum on a separate track.

Hangar 13 Distillery opened at 240 South Main Street, in the building that formerly housed Marrowbone Creek Brewing Co. It's a family operation run by Mike and Becky Hangge, veteran-owned, built around a World War II aviation theme, with a retro food truck called Rosie's Bomber Bites parked out front. It's also become something more than a bar. In March 2026, it hosted a Local Republican Candidate Forum for Cheatham County office seekers, the kind of civic gathering that only happens at a place the community already treats as its own.

The Ashland City Downtown Merchants Association has been meeting regularly too, gathering business owners at the Cheatham Chamber office on Warioto Way to talk through what's working downtown and what needs support. And the Saturday morning rhythm downtown keeps running through summer with the Farmers & Artisans Market, produce and crafts and live music from 9 to noon, alongside occasional Food Truck Frenzy events that turn the same stretch into an afternoon hangout.

None of that depended on Phase One or Phase Two finishing. Main Street built its own case for a Saturday morning or a Thursday evening downtown independent of what the trail was doing three miles away. If you've been waiting for some single moment when Ashland City's trail and its Main Street connect into one seamless afternoon, that moment is still probably a year or more out based on the town's own environmental review timeline. But you don't have to wait for it to have a good weekend here. The distillery, the market, and Riverview Restaurant and Marina along the river are already doing their part regardless of what's happening at the trailhead.

Where that leaves your next walk

The honest version of the trail's status right now: the newest piece anyone can confidently say is done is Eagle Pass, running toward Cheatham Dam, not toward town. The piece most people actually want, the one that would put a walk from downtown within easy reach, is either mid-construction or still waiting on federal paperwork, depending on which phase you mean. And the town's own website hasn't been updated to reflect any of it.

If you're planning a longer ride this fall, Eagle Pass toward Lock A is worth adding to your route now that it's secured for good. If you're hoping for a walk that starts closer to Main Street, that's still a project in progress, and the smartest move is a quick call to Ashland City Parks and Recreation before you build your Saturday around an assumption.

Following the trail's actual progress, not the version everyone assumes, tends to be a decent proxy for how a place is changing more broadly. Cheatham County has a habit of quietly building things one donated land tract or one council meeting at a time. If you're watching this corner of the county for reasons beyond a weekend walk, Kim Weyrauch and the Market Masters Group team track these details as part of understanding what makes a neighborhood work day to day. Let's Connect if you'd like to talk through what's happening in Cheatham County beyond the trailhead.