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2016 - 2026
Waynedale: The mature system's building turned from spokes to stitches, small connections with outsized effect. On Saturday, 16 April 2016, more than a hundred residents turned out for the ribbon cutting of the first trail connection from Waynedale to the Rivergreenway: new sidewalk along Lower Huntington Road, widening over the bridge across the St. Marys River, meeting a new eight-foot-wide trail ramp down to the St. Marys Pathway. A neighborhood that had watched the greenway pass on the far bank for decades was, with one ramp, on the system.
The Fishing Line: The northwest holds the network's most evocative small trail. The Fishing Line Trail, currently one mile long with parking on Ludwig Road, runs on the former Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad corridor and is named for its history: residents in Fort Wayne used to board those trains and ride north to Michigan to fish. Eventual plans would carry the line through Noble and LaGrange counties and all the way to Grand Rapids, Michigan, making the little mile a down payment on a second interstate trail line out of the city, a counterpart to the Poka-Bache's line south and north. A connecting segment on Ludwig Road ties it to the Lima Road Trail and the businesses along it.
The northwest connectors: Around it the northwest grid filled in. The Salomon Farm Loop, 1.65 miles around Salomon Farm Park at 817 West Dupont Road, is one of the most heavily used trails in the whole network, averaging 407 users a day in summer; it connects on its east side to the 13-mile Pufferbelly and to the Dupont Road Trail, which spans nearly five miles from Lima Road to Tonkel Road, with Lima Road itself carrying trails on both sides from Dupont south to Ludwig. A farm park's perimeter path, built for a stroll, became a junction.
The southeast: The southeast side's pieces answer to older geography than the suburbs. The Beckett's Run Trail runs 1.8 miles from Martin Luther Drive to Clinton Street, and its engineering is a canal footnote: it crosses the Wabash and Erie Feeder Canal on two large culvert crossings and Beckett's Run creek on a bridge, so the newest southeast trail still has to get over the 1834 feeder line the Towpath article describes. The Hanna Street Trail runs 3.65 miles from Wallace Street to the Rivergreenway and the 6-Mile Creek Trail at Tillman Park, its final phase between Wallace and Berry Street due for completion by the spring of 2026 on the city's page as read in November 2026.
The loop: The piece that would change the system's shape is the 6-Mile Creek Trail, about two miles built, running from Tillman Park behind Southtown Centre, north on Anthony Boulevard to Tillman Road and east to Lemar Drive. When completed, the city states, it will connect Fort Wayne and New Haven and form a 25-mile loop in the Rivergreenway network, joining the greenway's southern terminus at Tillman Park with its eastern terminus at Moser Park: the spokes of the zero marker, tied at their ends into a wheel. Until that loop closes, the Fort Wayne system remains what the portage made it, a set of lines radiating from the place where the rivers meet. The lines are longer than Ernest Williams dreamed in 1975 by an order of magnitude, and they are still being drawn.
Sources:
- The Waynedale News, April 2016 (the 16 April 2016 Waynedale ribbon cutting, the Lower Huntington Road sidewalk and the trail ramp).
- City of Fort Wayne, Rivergreenway page, as read November 2026 (the Fishing Line Trail and its railroad; the Salomon Farm Loop and its 407 daily users; the Dupont Road Trail; the Beckett's Run Trail and its feeder canal crossings; the 6-Mile Creek Trail and the 25-mile loop; the Hanna Street Trail and its spring 2026 final phase).