Why James Long Park's Trails Still Dead-End at Route 15

Walk the Catharpin Creek Greenway east from the ballfields at James S. Long Regional Park and the gravel holds together nicely for a while. Then the trees thin, the noise of tires on asphalt gets louder, and the path just stops. Busy Route 15 traffic separates you from a shared-use path that picks up again on the far side, running along Dominion Valley Drive. You can see it. You cannot walk to it. Not without doubling back a half mile to the nearest crosswalk and timing a gap in traffic that doesn't come often.

If you've lived in Haymarket long enough to have made that walk more than once, you already know this. What you may not know is that the county approved money to fix it more than a year ago, that a separate and unrelated project near the same intersection has already been finished, and that as of the most recent public budget document, the actual trail crossing still hasn't broken ground.

The mileage nobody agrees on

Before getting to the gap, it's worth being honest about what's already there, because even that depends on who you ask. The county's own park page for James S. Long Regional Park lists over four miles of wooded, natural-surface trail behind the sports fields. A county recreation directory puts the figure closer to five and a half miles of dirt trail winding through the same woods. MORE, the volunteer group that maintains much of the singletrack for mountain bikers, counts closer to seven, because their number includes narrower spur trails that don't show up on the county's official map.

None of these numbers are wrong. They're measuring different things: the county tracks maintained trail corridors, MORE tracks rideable singletrack, and casual hikers tend to just add up whatever loop they walked that day. Locally, people know the trails by name more than by mileage anyway: the Rollercoaster Trail for its short, punchy climbs, Ridgetop for the long green-blazed stretch along the high ground, Salamander and Homerun rounding out the network closer to the ballfields. Dogs are common. So are horses, which is why more than one trail review politely warns you to watch your step.

A separate, unconnected trail cluster sits a few miles away at White House Farm Foundation, where Leopold's Loop, Thoroughfare Connector, and Warbler Way wind through meadow and forest without any highway in the way. That cluster is a useful contrast, because it shows what a finished, self-contained trail loop looks like in this part of Prince William County. James Long Park's network is bigger and better used, but it's also the one with an unfinished edge.

Two projects, one intersection, only one of them done

Here's where the confusion starts. Drivers who pass the James Long Park entrance on Route 15 may have noticed construction there in recent years and assumed the trail gap got fixed along with it. It didn't. Two different projects share the same stretch of highway, and only one of them is finished.

The county's transportation department has confirmed the intersection widening is complete. The creek crossing that would actually let a pedestrian get from one side of Route 15 to the other is a different animal entirely, and it's the one still waiting.

The paper trail on the crossing

The trail connector has a real funding history, which is more than most proposed infrastructure in this county can say. On June 24, 2025, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors approved $2.9 million to design and build the crossing, and the money isn't coming from general tax revenue. It's coming from developer proffers tied to Carter's Mill, the over-55 community built nearby, which contributed $16,780 for every new single-family detached home and $15,425 for every attached home specifically earmarked for transportation improvements in the area.

News coverage of the vote noted something else worth sitting with: WTOP reported the crossing sits about a half mile from the intersection where two middle school students were killed in separate accidents while crossing the street. County documents also list this stretch as a priority for the Trails and Blueways Council, an advisory group that helps the Board of County Supervisors develop trails and blueways countywide, rather than just a nice-to-have.

That approval was over a year ago. So where does the project actually stand today? The most recent public answer comes from the county's own draft budget. The FY27 Capital Improvements Program, released February 17, 2026, still lists the Route 15 Trail at Catharpin Creek as an active line item, funded at $2.9 million in developer contributions plus $67,714 in local money, connecting the existing shared-use path at Dominion Valley Drive to James Long Park with a crossing at Catharpin Creek. A line item in a draft budget seven months before today isn't a finished trail. It's a project that has money and a plan but, as of the most recent document the public can check, not yet a shovel in the ground.

What connecting actually buys you

If the crossing does eventually get built, it doesn't just patch one gap. According to MORE, the volunteer trail organization that maintains the singletrack at James Long Park, the connector is meant to link the park to the Catharpin Creek Greenway, which in turn links to Silver Lake Regional Park and its own four-plus miles of trail. Put those pieces together and you get roughly 14 miles of connected trail between the two parks. The longer-term vision, still further out, would eventually stretch that network to Conway Robinson State Forest for something closer to 25 miles of continuous, non-motorized trail.

That's the version of Haymarket's trail system that gets talked about at community meetings and shows up in county planning documents. It is not the version that exists on the ground right now, which is two solid but separate networks with a highway in between.

Using what's actually there today

None of this means the trails aren't worth using now. Access to James Long Park's woods is easiest from the parking area at 4603 James Madison Highway, where several trailheads branch out from the lot near the playground. The Green Trail loop on the southeast side runs about 1.9 miles and is the one most reviewers describe as the easiest quick option. The longer Rollercoaster, Ridgetop, and Salamander combination stretches past 3 miles with a bit more climbing, still nothing that qualifies as strenuous by regional standards. Bring a leash for your dog and expect to share several sections of trail with horses.

If you're looking for a loop that already closes without interruption, the White House Farm Foundation trails off Thoroughfare Road are the better bet for now. Leopold's Loop and the connecting Warbler Way trail run through open meadow rather than highway frontage, and there's no Route 15 to plan around.

The bigger network is coming, on paper. Whether it arrives on the ground in the next construction cycle or the one after that is something the county's next capital improvements update will answer, not this one.

Keeping track of what's actually built versus what's still funded is the kind of detail that matters whether you're planning a Saturday trail run or thinking ahead about a move to this side of Prince William County. Krissy Cruse has spent years watching Haymarket change block by block, trail by trail, and is always glad to talk through what a specific street, park, or project actually means for daily life here. If you have a question about the neighborhood, reach out anytime.