Right now, a stretch of Tunnel Trail sits behind orange fencing where it dips under the Springfield Parkway bridge. A sinkhole opened there, and the Anne Springs Close Greenway fenced it off rather than route hikers around a hazard nobody could see coming. At the same time, Wild Azalea is closed entirely for storm damage. If you only caught wind of this secondhand, from a neighbor who mentioned "the trails are a mess right now," you might picture a preserve in disarray heading into fall.
That is not what is actually happening out there, and the reason has less to do with storm recovery than with how the Greenway is built in the first place.
One Preserve, Five Doors
Most people talk about Anne Springs Close Greenway like it's a single park with a single gate. It isn't. The 2,100 acres, more than twice the size of Central Park, are accessed through five separate entrances: Lake Haigler, Dairy Barn, Adventure Road, Blue Star, and Greenway Stables. Each one opens onto a different slice of what's actually out there, and each runs on its own set of rules. Equestrians, for instance, are required to come in through Lake Haigler off the Highway 21 Bypass, no matter which trail they're headed for.
That structure matters right now because the two closures live on the trail network, and the trail network is only one of the things the Greenway operates. Here's what the current status actually looks like:
| Trail or Feature | Status | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Wild Azalea | Closed | Storm damage, no reopening date posted |
| Tunnel Trail | Partially closed | Sinkhole fenced off under the Springfield Parkway bridge |
| Hike, Bike, Horse, Dog Park trails | Open | Includes the Mountain Bike Skills Park |
| Overall trail network | 40 miles | Wild Azalea and the Tunnel Trail segment are a small fraction of the total |
Tunnel Trail isn't a minor loop, either. It carries the biggest elevation gain of any named trail in the system, 247 feet, which means the hikers and trail runners most likely to notice its closure are the ones already pushing for a harder workout. Everyone else walking the flatter yellow-marked hiking loops or riding the beginner-friendly blue and green mountain bike trails would have no reason to know anything changed.
The Rest Of The Greenway Runs On Different Clocks
Here's the part that gets lost when people hear "trail closure" and assume the whole place is affected. The Greenway isn't one operation with one schedule. The trail system, the Canteen, and the Children's Farm each keep separate hours, because they're functionally separate experiences stacked on the same acreage.
The Crandall Bowles Children's Farm, home to the chickens, goats, alpacas, and cattle that make it a regular field-trip stop, runs Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with last entry at 2:30. That schedule has nothing to do with trail conditions. Neither does the Gateway Canteen, the restaurant at the Lake Haigler entrance that runs on seasonal hours and pours local beer and wine for anyone who's just spent two hours on a bike.
Then there's the Mary Warner Mack Dog Park, a 12-acre off-leash space with its own lakefront access. It requires an add-on membership separate from general Greenway admission, which tells you something on its own: the Greenway treats the dog park as its own product, not an amenity bolted onto the trail network. A closure two miles away on Tunnel Trail doesn't touch it.
Put plainly: if your Greenway routine is dog park, then Canteen, then home, September looks exactly like August did. Nothing about your loop intersects with either closure.
What's Actually Coming Up This Fall
The events calendar hasn't slowed down either, and a few dates are worth building a Saturday or Sunday around before the season turns:
- October 1 — Dustin Yager plays the Gateway Canteen starting at 5:30 p.m.
- October 4 — The Charlotte Symphony Orchestra performs an outdoor concert at the Greenway from 3:30 to 5 p.m., featuring winds, brass, and percussion.
- Fall Break Camp runs at the Children's Farm, a multi-day program for kids during the school break.
- October Campout gives families two dates to pitch a tent, using the same primitive camping area on the north side of Lake Haigler that's open to Greenway members year-round.
None of these depend on Tunnel Trail or Wild Azalea being open. The concert happens on the lawn. The campout happens at the lake. The farm keeps its own hours regardless of what the trail status page says.
If You Already Have A Greenway Habit
The only people who need to change anything this fall are the ones whose regular loop actually runs through the closed sections. If your Saturday route includes the Tunnel Trail climb or a pass through Wild Azalea, check the trail status page at ascgreenway.org before you drive out, since neither closure has a posted reopening date yet. Everyone else, whether your routine is the Dog Park and a coffee at the Canteen, a Sunday visit to see the goats at the Children's Farm, or a slower ride on the green-marked beginner trails near Adventure Road, will find the Greenway running exactly as it has all year.
Daily admission is $17 for adults and $8 for kids ages 3 to 12, the same rate whether you're headed for a trail, the farm, or just the lawn for a concert. A membership gets you in free and comes with digital guest passes, which matters more than it sounds like it should if you're the person who ends up bringing visiting family out here every time someone's in town.
The Greenway welcomes more than 300,000 visitors a year and ran on 12,698 volunteer hours in 2025 alone. A preserve operating at that scale, on land the Close family donated back in 1995 specifically to keep it from disappearing under development, doesn't grind to a halt because one trail segment needs repair work. It just keeps running the other four doors while the fifth one gets fixed.
If you're weighing what it actually means to live somewhere with 2,100 acres of preserved land minutes from your front door, that's a conversation Boykin Property Group has with Fort Mill buyers all the time. Let's walk you home.
