For most of the past decade, Apex has quietly behaved like two towns wearing one name. There was downtown, clustered around Salem Street and the Saturday morning crowd at the farmers market. And there was Beaver Creek, the retail corridor off Highway 64 and 55 where you go for the movie theater, the big-box run, and dinner after. Getting from one to the other has always meant getting in a car. Not because the two areas are far apart on a map, but because the trail meant to connect them stopped in the middle of a floodplain for years.
That changed last October, and most residents still plan their Saturdays like it didn't.
The Trail That Used to Dead-End
The Beaver Creek Greenway has existed in pieces for a long time. One stretch ran from Jaycee Park, near NC 55 on the downtown side, out to Kelly Road Park. Another separate stretch sat inside Kelly Road Park itself, waiting on a boardwalk segment through wetland terrain that made construction slow and expensive. Anyone who tried to walk or bike the whole way hit a hard stop partway through and had to detour onto surface streets to finish the trip.
The Town of Apex closed that gap on October 18, 2025, opening a 1.2-mile boardwalk connection on Great Trails State Day. Town Manager Randy Vosburg, who rode the new stretch himself that morning, had been waiting on the project since 2017. What used to be a trail broken into disconnected halves is now one continuous corridor running from Jaycee Park through Kelly Road Park to Apex Nature Park, a stretch that trail-tracking sites list at roughly five miles depending on where you start counting.
That is the part worth sitting with. The infrastructure that finally ties downtown Apex to the Beaver Creek side of town by foot or by bike is less than a year old. If your mental map of getting around town still assumes a car is required for anything past the neighborhood block, that map is out of date.
What the Loop Actually Looks Like
Start at Depot Plaza on North Salem Street, where the Apex Farmers Market runs every Saturday morning from 8 a.m. to noon through October before the hours shift to 9 a.m. to noon for the winter stretch. From there it's a short ride or walk over to Jaycee Park at 451 NC Highway 55, where the greenway proper begins.
The corridor from that point on is mostly wooded and paved, wide enough for strollers and slow enough in elevation that AllTrails rates the full out-and-back as an easy route. Along the way:
- Kelly Road Park, 25 acres with a castle-themed playground and enough open space for a pickup game or a picnic, sits about a mile short of the trail's western end.
- Apex Nature Park, at the western end near Evans Road, has an 18-hole disc golf course, a dog park, and sand volleyball and pickleball courts alongside Seymour Athletic Fields.
- Parking is available at both ends, at Jaycee Park and at Apex Nature Park, if you'd rather drive to one side and walk the loop rather than start from downtown.
The trail's west end sits about a mile of surface street away from the American Tobacco Trail, the 22-mile former rail corridor that runs north to Durham. That connection hasn't been built yet. The town has said linking to the ATT is a priority, but the timeline depends on easement acquisition that hasn't been finalized. For now, the loop that works without a car is the one between downtown and Beaver Creek, not the longer one out to Durham.
Beaver Creek Isn't Just the Big-Box Stop
The retail corridor at the trail's western edge has long been known for its anchors: Dick's Sporting Goods, Ross, TJMaxx and HomeGoods, Ulta, Five Below, Old Navy, and a Regal multiplex. That's the version of Beaver Creek most people already have in their heads, the one built for a weekend errand run rather than a reason to linger.
What's changed is the dining mix around the edges of that same corridor. Grain and Berry, a superfood-focused smoothie concept, opened its first Apex location at 2017 Creekside Landing Drive with a target window of late July into early August this year, according to the franchise owner's comments to a regional business outlet. It's a small addition, 1,600 square feet, but it's the kind of thing that only shows up if you're paying attention to what's filling the spaces between the anchors rather than the anchors themselves.
Sweet Talk Cafe and Desserts, tucked into the same shopping area, has become the spot locals point to when they want something the big chains don't offer, an Asian-inspired dessert menu built around bingsoo and croffles. And back on the downtown end of the loop, Scratch Kitchen and Taproom keeps drawing people in for lobster mac and cheese and pimento cheese wontons, the kind of menu that gave downtown its own identity long before Beaver Creek had much beyond parking lots.
The point isn't that either side of town is better. It's that you can now hit both in the same afternoon without moving your car.
What's on the Calendar Before the Weather Turns
Two dates worth building a weekend around before fall settles in. Festa Italiana lands on Hunter Street and the Town Hall courtyard on September 19, a free, all-day event built around a Galbani culinary stage, a cannoli-eating contest, and live entertainment that organizers bill as the largest Italian street festival in the state. It's a short walk from the downtown end of the greenway, which makes it an easy add-on to a Saturday morning that started at the farmers market.
And speaking of the market, the current 8 a.m. to noon Saturday hours at Depot Plaza only run through the end of October. Once November hits, the market shifts to a 9 a.m. start and holds through the winter months. If you've been meaning to make the early Saturday run before the schedule tightens up, the next two months are the window.
None of this is new activity. Apex has had a farmers market, a fall festival, and a shopping corridor for years. What's new is the ability to move between all of it on foot or by bike, which changes the shape of a Saturday more than any single new restaurant or event ever could. The town spent eight years and a fair amount of boardwalk construction closing a gap that used to force a choice between one side of town and the other. It's worth using.
If you're thinking about where a home in Apex actually sits relative to all of this, the difference between a five-minute walk to the greenway and a fifteen-minute drive to it shows up in daily life in ways a listing photo never captures. That's the kind of detail Ensemble Properties tracks block by block across the Triangle, not just for the sale, but for what living there actually feels like once you're in it.
