Two River Trails Meet at Country Club Park, and Only One Is Open Right Now

The city of Greer has spent the better part of 2026 building a trail along the South Tyger River. It was supposed to open by late summer. Then it was supposed to open this fall. Meanwhile, a separate mile-long nature trail already sits inside the same park, built months ago by a different group entirely, and it never got a grand opening announcement at all. If you live near Pebble Creek and someone tells you "the new trail is open," the honest answer is: which one?

Pebble Creek sits in Taylors, a short drive from downtown Greer, and Country Club Park has been part of that orbit for years as the quiet spot where the golf course meets the river. This fall it's actually two separate projects layered on top of each other, and knowing which is which saves you a wasted trip.

The Trail You Can Already Walk

Before the city ever broke ground on its greenway, a nonprofit called UGATA, through its Upstate Trail Corps, partnered with Greer's Parks, Recreation, and Tourism department to carve out a nature trail inside Country Club Park. It runs roughly a mile, follows the river on natural surfacing rather than pavement, and by UGATA's own project description, it was built specifically to eventually tie into the larger greenway the city is now constructing.

That trail exists today. It has no boardwalks, no ADA paving, and no ribbon-cutting to its name. It's just there, open, and easy to miss if you're waiting for a news story to tell you a trail has opened near you.

The Trail Still Under Construction

The city's project is a different animal: an ADA-compliant path of concrete and boardwalk, engineered to a formal specification. Greer's city council awarded a $985,881 contract for Phase 1A to Foothills Contracting Services LLC, covering roughly 1,000 linear feet of concrete trail and 350 feet of boardwalk, according to council notes recapped by Greenville Journal. The full stretch, when finished, will run 0.7 miles from Country Club Park, 12 feet wide, wheelchair accessible in a way the older nature trail was never designed to be.

Here's the actual build timeline, pieced together from the city's own weekly updates:

• February 2026: Trees damaged by Hurricane Helene were cleared from the trail corridor.
• April 2026: Crews began pouring concrete. The city's own newsletter said the trail "should be open in mid-to-late summer."
• June 2026: Boardwalk installation began at the two planned river overlooks. Greenville County Council member Kelly Long presented Greer's Parks, Recreation & Tourism department with a $5,000 check toward a trailhead sign.
• July 2026: The city's language shifted. Instead of "mid-to-late summer," the most recent GreerView update said construction "should be complete by fall 2026" and added, in the same breath, "we hope to open it by fall."

That's a deadline that already moved once, from summer to fall, with a hedge attached to the second date too. As of late September, the city hasn't published a firmer opening date than that. If you've been holding off on a first walk because you assumed the ribbon-cutting already happened, it hasn't, at least not according to anything the city has said publicly.

There's a smaller detail worth flagging here too. The construction bid documents for Phase 1A describe four river overlooks along the route. The city's own newsletter, describing the same stretch, mentions two. Neither source is wrong exactly, they're just describing the project at different points in its design, which is a fair reminder that even the people building this thing have been refining the specifics as they go.

Side by Side

What Comes After This Fall

Even once Phase 1A opens, it won't connect to much. The larger vision, per the city's own materials, links the greenway to Greer High School, Cypress Landing, and Greer Golf, but those are described as future phases without a published construction timeline of their own. What you'll have this fall, assuming the city hits its second deadline, is a 0.7-mile out-and-back stretch starting at Country Club Park at 2501 Country Club Road. It's a real amenity, and it's a small one. Anyone picturing a finished network connecting the golf course to the high school this year is picturing a phase that hasn't been scheduled yet.

The Rest of Greer's Year

The trail isn't the only thing that moved slower or faster than expected downtown this year. The city's sesquicentennial mural, painted by Adam Schrimmer of Blank Canvas Mural Company on the side of the old Davenport building at Trade and Randall Streets, was completed this summer after weeks of work in the heat. The design draws from a photograph of Trade Street taken in 1938, which puts a specific year on a corridor that a lot of visitors assume has always looked roughly the same.

The Greer Farmers Market ran its annual Peach Cook-off fundraiser at Greer City Park this summer too, with a dollar-a-sample format that turns produce judging into a low-stakes Sunday outing. Both of these happened months before the trail's fall deadline, which is a useful reminder that Greer's civic calendar doesn't wait on any single project. Things opened, got painted, and got judged on peach cobbler while the trail was still being poured.

Checking Before You Go

If you're planning a first visit to either trail, the simplest move is to check the city's own trail and facilities page before you drive over, since the boardwalk sections of Phase 1A were still active construction zones as recently as July. The older nature trail inside Country Club Park doesn't carry that risk. It's been walkable the whole time, quietly, without needing anyone to declare it finished.

Golf-course neighborhoods like Pebble Creek tend to collect these kinds of half-finished amenities: the clubhouse renovation that's almost done, the pool schedule that changes every spring, the trail that's open depending on which trail you mean. Knowing the difference between what's actually usable and what's still aspirational is the same instinct that matters when you're evaluating a listing's amenities, not just a trailhead.

If you're weighing what a Pebble Creek address actually gets you day to day, beyond the golf course itself, that's the kind of ground-level detail Joanna K Realty tracks as a matter of course. Reach out for a conversation about what's genuinely finished in this neighborhood, and what's still under construction.