Woodstock and Cobb County officials have opened a new extension of the Noonday Creek Trail, stitching together two counties' worth of pavement into a single route that runs from near downtown Woodstock south into Cobb County, ending at Noonday Creek Park. The 1.5-mile segment stretches south of the trail's former terminus at Ga. 92, closing a gap that planners have been chasing for the better part of a decade.
According to the Cobb Courier, the project took nearly three years to build and carried a reported cost of $8.1 million. Woodstock's own city page describes the new stretch as connecting a trailhead near Reformation Brewery and Elm Street Green to Noonday Creek Park in Cobb County, according to woodstockga.gov.
Woodstock Mayor Michael Caldwell framed the new link as more than just a recreational nicety. He described the paved segment as an alternative multimodal transportation option and an economic development tool, per the Cobb Courier's reporting. Officials say the broader Noonday Creek Trail could eventually allow travel between Woodstock, the Chattahoochee River and the Silver Comet Trail, though that fuller buildout remains a future goal rather than a finished product.
A Long, Weather-Delayed Build
Construction on the extension started in January 2024 near Noonday Park on Shallowford Road in unincorporated Cobb County, according to WSB-TV. The station reported that a Woodstock city official had expected the project to wrap up by spring 2026, with weather and difficult site conditions pushing the timeline back. Woodstock's capital improvement plan administrator told the station that crews faced prolonged site challenges even after the rain had subsided.
Caldwell had earlier described the extension as a way for the city to become the bridge into the rest of Cherokee County through the connection, per the same station's report. Cobb County's existing Noonday Creek Trail already stretches seven miles from the Bell's Ferry Road trailhead to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, giving the new link a sizable network to tie into on the Cobb side.
A Project Years in the Making
The push to connect Woodstock's trail to Cobb County dates back years, with the scope and price tag shifting at each stage of planning. In 2018, the Atlanta Regional Commission backed a proposal to extend the trail from Highway 92 into Cobb County to connect with Noonday Creek Park and the county's trail network, according to Patch. That 2018 estimate put the extension at 1.8 miles and roughly $3.16 million, with about $2.5 million coming from federal funds and $633,668 from the local entity, per Patch's report. An earlier planning account described in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put the route at about two miles, running from Ga. 92 in Woodstock south along the creek into Cobb before ending at Noonday Park at Shallowford Road — a figure that differs from both the 2018 proposal and the 1.5-mile segment described on Woodstock's city page.
By 2020, the price had climbed further. Woodstock's City Council approved seeking about $1 million in additional federal funds and endorsed Cobb County's own request for funding to extend its portion south to Bells Ferry Road, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. That report put the project's total cost at roughly $4.4 million, up from an earlier figure of $3.17 million, with $3.52 million expected from federal funds and a local match of about $250,000. The original 2018 funding schedule had called for engineering work in 2019, right-of-way acquisition in 2021, and utility work and construction in 2022 — a timeline that construction records show slipped considerably before ground was finally broken in December 2023.
