For years, a Saturday in Sandy Springs meant picking a side. You went downtown to City Springs for the farmers market and a walk around the City Green, or you drove out Morgan Falls Road for the river, the boat dock, and the porch swings at Morgan Falls Overlook Park. The two were only three miles apart on a map, but they belonged to different trips. Different parking lots, different moods, different reasons to get in the car.
That stopped being true in May 2025, when the city opened the first finished piece of the Springway Trail, a paved path connecting Morgan Falls Overlook Park straight through to Roswell Road. It is not a scenic loop or a park amenity. It is a direct physical link between the two places residents already treated as the neighborhood's twin poles, and more than a year later, that link is starting to change what a Sandy Springs Saturday actually looks like.
What Segment 2A Actually Built
The trail section, known internally as Segment 2A, runs 1.88 miles from Roswell Road at Cimarron Parkway to the entrance of Morgan Falls Overlook Park. It is 8 to 12 feet wide, poured in concrete and pervious concrete, and it carries walkers, runners, and cyclists past the Morgan Falls dam on the Chattahoochee River before climbing to a raised boardwalk over Orkin Lake.
That boardwalk is the reason the project took three years longer than planned. Crews broke ground in December 2022 expecting a straightforward build, then hit solid rock underneath Orkin Lake, a discovery that added drilling work and pushed completion back roughly a year and a half. The finished cost landed around $8.5 million, covered by a $3 million Georgia Outdoor Stewardship grant from the state's Department of Natural Resources and the rest from city funds. The trail is open from dawn to dusk, with lighting, benches, and landscaping along the route.
None of that is trivia. It is the difference between a nice-to-have sidewalk and a piece of infrastructure expensive enough that the city is unlikely to abandon the rest of the plan around it.
1.88 miles is now the distance between a farmers market stall and a kayak launch.
Two Anchors, One Path
The trail did not create either end of itself. It connected two things that were already there, and each has its own identity.
| Morgan Falls Overlook Park | City Springs District | |
|---|---|---|
| Opened | 2010, the city's first new park after its 2005 incorporation | Rebuilt as the current civic and dining hub over the past decade |
| Signature draws | Boat dock, playground, porch swings, kayak and SUP rentals | Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center, City Green, Studio Theatre |
| Weekly ritual | Anglers and birdwatchers, especially in warm months | Saturday farmers market, 8:30 a.m. to noon, rain or shine |
| Feel | Thirty acres of river frontage and shade | Restaurants, comedy nights, a plaza built for foot traffic |
Before the trail, visiting both in one day meant driving from one lot to the other. Now it means picking a direction and walking.
What's Filling The Calendar This Fall
The trail's usefulness shows up most clearly when you look at what the city has scheduled at each end of it this season.
On August 15, Morgan Falls Overlook Park hosted the first Sandy Springs SUP Showdown, a stand-up paddleboard competition drawing paddlers from across the Southeast to the same water where casual kayak rentals happen every warm weekend. It is a small event, but it is a sign the park's river frontage is now programmed for more than fishing and porch swings.
Three miles downtown, the Blue Stone Arts & Music Festival returns September 25 and 26 for its fourth year, spread across the City Green and Blue Stone Road. This year's free, two-day lineup includes alternative rock band Nicotine Dolls headlining Friday night in what organizers say is the band's final United States show before an international tour, and singer-songwriter Allen Stone closing out Saturday, fresh off dates with Chris Stapleton. More than 60 artists and makers will set up an Artist Market alongside an Emerging Artist Exhibit and a Kids Zone, and the weekend's Blue Stone 5K-9 fun run will include adaptive handcycles through a partnership with Catalyst Sports.
Between those two bookends, the Saturday farmers market keeps its regular rhythm at City Springs through November, more than twenty vendors setting up around the City Green each week. It won a Best of Georgia award from the Georgia Business Journal this year, the same competition that recognized the city's Sparkle Sandy Springs festival.
Put those three things on a calendar and a pattern appears. The river end of the trail is starting to host its own draws instead of just absorbing overflow from downtown, which means the walk between them is doing real work rather than sitting empty most weekends.
The Loop Isn't Finished
It would be easy to describe the Springway Trail as complete, but it is not, and the honest version of this story includes what is still missing.
Segment 2A is only the first quarter of a planned 5.4-to-5.6-mile loop that is supposed to eventually connect Morgan Falls Overlook Park all the way around to Big Trees Forest Preserve, one of the city's other significant green spaces. The next piece, Segment 2C, would run 1.6 miles from the park along the Chattahoochee River to Grogans Ferry Road, and the city submitted a grant application for that stretch back in February 2025. As of early 2026, reporting on the project put the cost of the next phase at roughly $14.5 million, with segments 2C, 2D, and 2E still in design and no confirmed construction start.
That matters for anyone deciding how to spend a Saturday based on this trail. Right now you can walk or bike from Roswell Road, over Orkin Lake, into the park. You cannot yet continue the loop toward Big Trees Forest Preserve or fully circle back. The connection that exists today is real and already changing routines, but it is a beginning, not a finished network.
What This Actually Changes If You Live Here
The easy version of this story is "Sandy Springs got a nice new trail." The more useful version is narrower. For more than a decade, Morgan Falls Overlook Park and City Springs functioned as two separate neighborhoods wearing one zip code, each with its own regulars who rarely crossed over on the same afternoon. The 1.88 miles of paved trail between them did not just add recreation space. It removed the car trip that used to separate a river morning from a downtown afternoon, and this fall's calendar, an inaugural paddleboard race at one end and a festival headlined by a touring national act at the other, suggests the city is starting to program both ends as if they are part of the same day out.
That is worth knowing whether you are planning next Saturday or just trying to understand how this particular corner of Sandy Springs actually functions day to day.
If a walk through this stretch of the city ever turns into a longer conversation about living near it, Shanna Smith is glad to help you think through what that would look like. Request a private consultation whenever that day comes.
