Along the Ecusta Trail, Local Businesses Are Making Use of the Open Six Miles

"The reason we're here is the trail. If you're sitting at a table on our patio, you can basically high-five bikers as they bike by."

That's Robert Gunn, co-owner of Ecusta Market & Cafe, quoted in Blue Ridge Country on how close the trail runs behind his building in downtown Hendersonville. He wasn't describing a ribbon cutting. He was describing an ordinary afternoon, more than a year after the first six miles opened. What's easy to miss, more than a year in, is that this stretch of trail behaves like a finished thing even though the county still files it as Phase I of a much longer plan. The businesses along it are already operating alongside the open stretch.

What "Open" Actually Covers

The paved trail runs roughly six miles, from the South Main Street and South King Street trailhead in downtown Hendersonville out to The Crossroads in Horse Shoe, where Brevard Road meets Battle Creek Road. That's the entire built network right now. The eventual connection to Brevard, the one that shows up on every map of the project, is still mostly lines on an engineering drawing.

Six miles is not nothing, though, and the businesses strung along it have treated it less like a bonus amenity and more like Main Street. About a mile out from the downtown trailhead sits Lennox Station, a cluster of converted industrial buildings that now houses Trailside Brewing Co., Ecusta Market & Cafe, a playground, and Venture Ecusta, the bike rental shop that outfits riders with Giant bicycles and e-bikes for the trip. Keep going and around mile marker three you reach Elijah Mountain Gem Mine, where longtime manager Heather Allison has seen enough cyclists roll up that the mine installed its own dedicated bike station. Farther out, Southern Streams CoffeeHouse became enough of a fixture that its owner, identified in trail coverage as Rodriguez, worked out overflow parking with a nearby church and put in a bike rack to handle the new foot and wheel traffic. The trail's western end lands at The Crossroads in Horse Shoe, home to Root + Bone restaurant and a rock-and-roll themed bar with an outdoor deck.

Taken together, those businesses show how much of the open stretch is already part of everyday local life.

The Part That Isn't Finished

The honest version of this story includes the part that hasn't happened yet.

Henderson County's Rail-Trail Advisory Committee met on July 8, 2026 to review Phase II progress, and the county's own project updates through August described construction underway on a west retaining wall, with the scope of that work and a run of severe storms both adding time to the schedule. County engineer Marcus Jones has been posting steady, if cautious, notes about wet weather setting the pace all summer. None of that is bad news exactly. It's just a reminder that the five miles from Horse Shoe through Etowah to the county line are a separate, slower project from the six miles that already work, and that Brevard's own stretch beyond the county line hasn't started construction at all.

If you've been holding off on the trail because you assumed it was still "under construction," that assumption is only half true. The part that's built is done. The part that isn't has its own timeline, and it isn't this fall's.

Three Local Connections to the Finished Six Miles This Month

You don't need the Brevard connection to have a full month of trail life. Look at what's already happened, and what's still coming, on the stretch that exists right now.

• Saturday, September 12: The inaugural Railway 5K & 1 Mile, presented by Aetna, started and ended near the Hendersonville Welcome Center. The 5K went off at 7:30 a.m., the untimed one-mile fun run five minutes later, with the 5K's turnaround point marked at Southern Streams CoffeeHouse and an awards ceremony around 8:45 a.m. It was the first organized race the trail has hosted.
• September 7 through September 13: Mast General Store in Hendersonville donated 10 percent of sales, plus rounded-up purchases, to Friends of the Ecusta Trail.
• Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27: Cane Creek Cycling Components is hosting its first Crafted Bike Show, with Friends of the Ecusta Trail set to have a presence there.

Line those three up and you get a trail with activity both completed and still ahead: a race and a fundraiser have already happened, and a local bike show is on the calendar later this month. That's not the calendar of a project still proving itself. That's the calendar of something already woven into how people spend their Saturdays.

What This Actually Tells You

The easy version of this story is "new trail opens, town excited." The more useful version is narrower: the six miles between downtown Hendersonville and Horse Shoe are already part of local business life. A gem mine installed a bike station. A coffeehouse worked out overflow parking with a nearby church. Ecusta Market & Cafe has a patio beside the trail. These examples show how nearby businesses are engaging with the open stretch now.

The other five miles, from Horse Shoe to the county line, will get built. The retaining wall will get finished, the wet weather will eventually cooperate, and at some point Transylvania County and the City of Brevard will do their own stretch of design work. None of that changes what's true about the six miles right now. If you live near this corridor, you don't have to wait for downtown-to-downtown to treat it like it matters. Enough of Hendersonville already has.

If you're already settled near the trail and curious what that kind of neighborhood momentum has done to your own property's value, Aaron Chapman and the team offer a free home valuation with no pressure attached, just a clear look at where things stand.