The Fastest Way to Hickory's Overwater Bridge Has Been Closed for Almost Two Years

Pull up to the end of Old Lenoir Road expecting to park at 1580 Old Lenoir Road NW, the lot built specifically to put you closest to Hickory's overwater bridge, and you'll find the gate still down. That gate closed on October 14, 2024. It has stayed closed through a hurricane repair, an electrical repair, and a construction project that is still not finished. If you haven't checked on the Riverwalk since the ribbon-cutting in 2024, the way you think you're supposed to get there is not the way most people actually get there anymore.

That distinction matters because two separate things have been happening to this trail at the same time, and locals tend to fold them into one story. The bridge itself has had its own run of closures tied to storm damage. The parking lot closest to it has been shut for an entirely different reason: road construction on the OLLE Art Walk, the trail segment still being built along Old Lenoir Road. One is a repair. The other is a build. Only one of them has finished.

What Actually Happened to the Bridge

Hickory's overwater bridge is not a minor amenity. It's the longest inverted Fink truss bridge in North America, designed by architect Miguel Rosales, and it opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 4, 2024, as the second completed segment of the city's five-part Hickory Trail system.

Five months later, the remnants of Hurricane Helene moved through Catawba County and damaged a section of the bridge's handrail. The city closed the bridge until a custom replacement rail could be manufactured and installed, and it stayed closed into the winter. It reopened in February 2025.

That repair held for about seven months. On September 15, 2025, the city closed the bridge again, this time for electrical work on the lighting system and conduit, damage that also traced back to Helene. The estimate was four to six weeks. It took closer to eight: the bridge reopened to pedestrians and cyclists coming from Geitner Park on November 7, 2025, and that is the most recent public status on the bridge itself.

The parking lot at the Old Lenoir Road trailhead never followed that timeline. Every city notice through that reopening, including the one announcing the bridge back open in November, noted the same line: the trailhead lot remains closed because of OLLE Art Walk construction nearby. If the city has posted anything more recent about that specific lot, it hadn't surfaced by the time this was written. Check hkytrail.com before you plan around it.

Five Segments, Four Finished

The Riverwalk is one piece of a larger project. The Hickory Trail runs more than 10 miles and was funded through a $40 million bond referendum, and it's built in five segments: City Walk, Riverwalk, Aviation Walk, Historic Ridgeview Walk, and OLLE Art Walk.

Four of five are open. The OLLE Art Walk is the one holding up the full loop, and it's also the reason the closest Riverwalk parking lot has stayed shut. The city approved a $22.7 million construction contract with Neill Grading and Construction Company in February 2024, broke ground the same day as the Riverwalk ribbon-cutting, and estimated about 24 months to finish, which points to roughly spring 2026. Old Lenoir Road itself closed entirely between 15th Avenue NW and 12th Street Drive NW for 60 days starting May 27, 2025, part of a road diet cutting the corridor from four lanes to three to make room for the trail. In March 2026, city council approved a $150,000 settlement over a property the city had condemned for the project back in 2022, a sign that land issues were still being resolved well past the original construction window.

None of that means the trail won't be finished. It means the timeline has moved at least once, and anyone planning a walk around the whole loop should verify current status rather than assume the 2026 estimate held.

The Two Parking Lots That Actually Work

With the Old Lenoir Road trailhead closed, the trail is reached two other ways, and each has a different character.

Rotary-Geitner Park, at 2035 12th Street Drive NW, puts you directly onto the elevated overland section of the Riverwalk. It's about a seven-tenths-of-a-mile walk on paved trail to reach the bridge, plus another ten minutes down to the overwater section itself. This is also the access point for the Lake Hickory Trails mountain bike paths and the Broyhill Greenway, so cyclists get more mileage out of parking here than walkers do.

Hickory City Park, at 1581 12th Street Drive NW, is the other option, about eight-tenths of a mile via the paved greenway before you reach the same elevated bridge section. It's a slightly longer walk than Rotary-Geitner, but the park itself has more built-in amenities if you're bringing kids along for part of the outing rather than the whole loop.

Jaycee Park, at 1250 15th Avenue NW and home to P.D. Fowler Field, is the fallback if the first two are full. From there it's about a third of a mile down Old Lenoir Road to the trailhead, past the city's water filtration facility, and there's no sidewalk for that stretch, so you're on the road shoulder or the grass.

Worth remembering: even before construction closed it, the Old Lenoir Road trailhead lot only ever had 15 parking spaces. It was never built to carry heavy weekend traffic. The construction closure didn't create a bottleneck so much as it removed the smallest option from the rotation.

A Few Rules Worth Knowing Before You Go

Pets are welcome on the trail but must be leashed, and waste stations are provided along the route. Fishing and diving from the bridge are both prohibited, and swimming isn't permitted from any part of the trail. These are posted rules, not suggestions, and they apply the same whether you're parking at Geitner or walking down from Jaycee.

What the Old Lenoir Corridor Already Has, Trail or No Trail

The unfinished trail segment doesn't mean the corridor itself is empty. Old Lenoir Road is home to a working arts district that predates the Art Walk project and gave it its name, the first two letters of "Old" and the first three of "Lenoir." North Hickory Market, opened in October 2025 by owners Calvin Reyes, Melissa Reyes, and Jordan Bost, describes itself as a neighborhood restaurant inside that same OLLE Arts District. The corridor also holds working studios and galleries, including Mud Mamas Studio and ATAC Galleries, part of a small cluster of makers who've built the district's identity well ahead of the paved trail catching up to it.

You can walk into that corridor today using the City Walk segment, which is already finished and runs from Lenoir-Rhyne University through downtown to Old Lenoir Road. You don't need the Art Walk portion to reach the businesses it's named after. You just won't yet get the dedicated pedestrian path connecting it directly to the Riverwalk on the other end.

What's Next for the Trail

Beyond the current construction, two future additions are worth watching. The Robert Lackey family has a public-private partnership with the city to renovate Rotary-Geitner Park into the Deidra Lackey Memorial Park, which is planned to include a lake house. Separately, once NCDOT finishes its planned improvements to US 321, the current northbound bridge is slated to be handed over to the city for pedestrian use, which would extend Riverwalk access across Lake Hickory into Caldwell County. Neither has a firm completion date yet, but both would meaningfully change how much of the lake becomes reachable on foot or by bike from where the trail sits today.

For now, the honest version of the story is this: four of five segments are open, the landmark bridge is currently accessible from Geitner Park, and the shortcut everyone remembers from opening day has been the least reliable way in for almost two years running.

If you're weighing what it's like to actually live near a piece of Hickory infrastructure like this, on a daily basis rather than a brochure basis, that's the kind of on-the-ground read Pinnacle Property Group NC brings to every conversation about buying or selling in this part of Catawba County. Reach out any time you'd like to talk through what a neighborhood is really like to live in, not just what it looks like on a map.