Ask anyone who has lived near Bryan Park for more than a few years how they get there, and they will describe the same route. Drive to Hermitage Avenue, look for the granite gate between the interstate overpass and Lakeside Avenue, find a spot on one of the side streets, and walk in past the soccer fields toward the ponds. It is the entrance most people picture when they picture the park at all, and for good reason. It is also, as of the last two years, no longer the only way in, and not necessarily the fastest one if you live on the Scott Road side of things, in the same 23227 zip code the park itself calls home.
In July 2024, Henrico County cut the ribbon on a 1,400-foot stretch of a brand-new regional trail at Spring Park, just off Park Street. It sounds like a small thing, and county officials said as much at the ceremony. Fairfield District Supervisor Roscoe D. Cooper III told the crowd the section "does not seem like much," but called it the piece that would "safely connect pedestrians and cyclists to Bryan Park." That connector, plus a new pedestrian signal across Lakeside Avenue, quietly opened a second front door to the park from the north, closer to the streets around Scott Place than the Hermitage gate most residents still default to.
The gate everyone still uses
The traditional approach has not changed. AllTrails still points hikers to the front entrance off Hermitage Road, which leads straight to the soccer fields and barbecue pits, and recommends the back entrance off Bryan Park Road for anyone trying to skip the crowds near the playground. That advice is sound, and it will stay sound for the foreseeable future. The park's main gate is a genuine landmark. It was erected by the City in 1910 when the Bryan family donated the land, and the 262-acre property has carried a spot on the National Register of Historic Places ever since, according to Friends of Bryan Park, the volunteer nonprofit that maintains much of the grounds.
None of that history is going anywhere. What has changed is that Hermitage Avenue is no longer the only sanctioned way to arrive on foot, and for households on the north side of the park, closer to Park Street and Spring Park than to the granite gate, that is worth knowing.
What actually opened in 2024, and what slipped to 2027
Here is where the timeline gets interesting, because the county's own promises have shifted since that first ribbon cutting. Local news coverage of the July 2024 opening reported that public restrooms at the new segment would be available "starting in the fall," and that Henrico's full 7.5-mile portion of the trail would be complete "by late 2026." The Fall Line Trail's own project tracker, last updated this spring, tells a slightly different story. As of its current timeline, trailside restrooms and other amenities for the Park Street section are still listed as "expected in 2026," a full construction season after they were first promised. And the broader goal, the 13-mile contiguous run between Ashland and Richmond that includes all of Henrico's segments, is now projected to be finished for all users in 2027, not 2026.
None of this is a scandal. Regional trail projects built across three counties and a city almost never land on their first announced date. But it matters for anyone deciding whether to route a Saturday morning through Spring Park right now: the connector itself is open and usable today, while the finished amenities around it, the bathrooms, the additional trailhead parking, are still a construction season out.
The bigger piece of the puzzle, the segment the Fall Line Trail's own map labels the "Bryan Park Section," is listed simply as "Coming Soon." That is the stretch that will eventually close the gap between the Park Street connector and the park's interior trail network without relying on the Lakeside Avenue crossing. Until it opens, the Hermitage and Bryan Park Road entrances remain the practical way into the park's interior on foot, even for people whose closest new infrastructure is the Park Street trailhead.
Nobody agrees on how long the loop actually is
One small proof that this park still runs on word of mouth more than official signage: three different route-tracking apps clock the same paved loop at three different distances. Komoot logs the Joseph Bryan Park loop at 2.7 miles, taking the average jogger about 28 to 29 minutes. AllTrails calls it a 1.9-mile loop that takes roughly 37 minutes. Great Runs describes a longer 3.4-mile paved circuit around the ponds, forest, and Azalea Gardens, with the option to extend onto the dirt singletrack running alongside Jordan's Branch for more mileage.
None of the three is wrong. They are measuring different combinations of the same park, some sticking to the main paved ring around the playing fields and ponds, others folding in the Jordan's Branch trail or cutting the loop shorter near the Nature Center side. If you are new to the park, or new to Park Street's version of getting there, it is worth treating any single app's mileage as a starting point rather than gospel.
The park itself has more layers than the loop suggests
The paved ring gets the attention, but Bryan Park's older features are still the reason people keep coming back. The 17-acre Azalea Gardens hit their bloom window every spring and remain one of the most-cited highlights among longtime visitors. Two ponds anchor the park's center, one of them fed by a small waterfall, alongside a disc golf course that draws its own regular crowd separate from the runners and dog walkers. Leashed dogs are welcome throughout, and a fenced off-leash dog park within Bryan Park itself gives the northern neighborhoods a dedicated space that does not require driving across town to the busier options near Scott's Addition.
There is also a quieter historical layer that most casual visitors miss entirely. Young's Spring, tucked near the dam on the northern bank of Upham Brook, is the documented site where Gabriel Prosser and roughly two dozen enslaved men planned an 1800 uprising, an event now generally referred to as Gabriel's Rebellion. Friends of Bryan Park has worked to document and mark that history as part of the park's broader story, alongside its more recent role as a Virginia Master Naturalists project site for native plant restoration.
If a walk through the park leaves you wanting a stop afterward, Tripadvisor's own list of nearby things to do points to Veil Brewing Co. as one of the closer options for a post-loop drink, a reasonable bookend to a morning spent on either the paved ring or the Jordan's Branch dirt trail.
Using the window while it is still open
For anyone on the Scott Road side of the park, here is the practical version of everything above.
- Try the Park Street entrance before defaulting to a drive over to Hermitage Avenue. The connector and the Lakeside Avenue pedestrian signal are open now, even with the restrooms still pending.
- Do not trust a single app's mileage for the loop. Check two if you are planning a specific run or a stroller-length walk, since the gap between 1.9 and 3.4 miles is real.
- Time an Azalea Gardens visit for spring, but treat the ponds, disc golf course, and Jordan's Branch singletrack as year-round reasons to go back.
- Expect construction activity and incomplete amenities around Park Street through the rest of 2026. The county's own timeline has already slipped once.
- Keep an eye on the Fall Line Trail's "Bryan Park Section" listing. Once it moves off "Coming Soon," the walk from the north side of the park gets meaningfully more direct.
The bigger regional picture backs this up. Hanover County opened its first completed regional stretch of the Fall Line Trail this spring, linking the Ashland Trolley Line Trail through Hanover to Woodman Road in Henrico, with design work already underway on a further 7.5-mile extension that would eventually tie into Henrico's existing Lakeside segment. The 43-mile trail, once finished, is meant to connect Ashland to Petersburg in one continuous corridor. Bryan Park sits close enough to that spine that its own connector improvements are part of a much longer story, one that is still being built in real time, a season at a time, right through the neighborhoods around Scott Road.
Whether or not you ever think about real estate here, it helps to know your own park is mid-renovation. The gate on Hermitage Avenue will still be there next year. The new one on Park Street is worth using in the meantime.
If you ever do want a local read on this corner of Henrico, from someone who pays attention to more than just the park map, Cowan Realty is always glad to talk it through.
