A new section of the Northwest Arkansas Razorback Regional Greenway opened today, following two ribbon-cutting ceremonies to mark the occasion.
The new portion of the Razorback Regional Greenway hiking and cycling trail connects north Bentonville to the so-called Bridge to the Future, which is near Interstate 540 in Rogers.
The announcement marked an important step towards the completion of a 36-mile paved trail that will stretch from Bella Vista to Fayetteville. The entire project, funded by a federal grant and a gift from the Walton Family Foundation, is on schedule and will be complete by the end of next year.
The greenway project when its complete will connect schools, large employment centers, retail centers, the University of Arkansas and the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville, NorthWest Arkansas Community College and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, and the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale.
The federally funded portion of the greenway is a 16-mile section in the middle of the overall project. The federal portion goes from Rogers to Lowell to Springdale before it ends at Lake Fayetteville.
Fayetteville already has an impressive paved trail system, which extends from the north side of Lake Fayetteville to locations throughout the city. The trail, which is filled with cyclists on warm days, passes under the Fulbright Expressway on its way south to Dickson Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard.
Similarly, there already are paved trails in Bentonville and Rogers to enable cyclists to ride through those communities.
