A woman walks two dogs off the Orchard Road Trailhead most Sunday mornings, timing it so she's back at Belleview Station before the farmers market beer garden opens. It's a Greenwood Village routine that barely changes week to week: park at the lot behind the vendor tents, grab coffee, let the dogs off toward the canal, come back for produce before the good tomatoes are gone. What she probably hasn't clocked, because there's no reason to, is that the shade she's walking under is currently being kept alive by a construction project most residents will never see finished start to finish.
The trail carries the name of a canal. For most of the last century, that name meant something literal. Today it's closer to a memory the trees are still living off of, and the city is in the middle of replacing the water source that used to do that job.
What the Name Still Implies
Arapahoe County is the steward of roughly 45 of the High Line Canal Trail's 71 total miles, a stretch that runs through Cherry Hills Village, Greenwood Village, Littleton, Centennial, Aurora, and part of Denver, broken into 27 numbered segments of two to five miles each. Most of those segments are unremarkable in the way a good trail should be: gravel, shade, a bench or two. What makes the Greenwood Village stretch different isn't the scenery. It's that the trees lining it are no longer getting water from the feature they're named after, and the city is actively engineering a replacement.
That's not a small distinction for anyone who walks this trail regularly. Cottonwoods along a dry ditch don't hold their canopy forever without help. The High Line Canal Conservancy is currently designing an irrigation system meant to eventually cover the canal's entire reach through Greenwood Village, and the first phase of that system is already going in around the Marjorie Perry Nature Preserve, powered by a groundwater well rather than the canal itself.
Three Segments, Three Different Trails
Locals tend to talk about "the canal trail" as one thing, but the Greenwood Village stretch is really three distinct experiences stitched together, and knowing which one you're on changes what to expect.
- Segment 11, the Greenwood Village Amble (Franklin Street to the Orchard Road Trailhead, roughly 4.6 miles as most people walk it, out and back): a quieter, more rural feel with horse pastures and bridle paths, popular with equestrians as much as walkers. There's no parking at the Franklin Street end, so the practical move is to park at Orchard Road and go out and back.
- Segment 12, the Nature Preserve Amble (Orchard Road Trailhead to the Belleview Trailhead, about 3 miles one way): crusher-fine gravel through the Marjorie Perry Nature Preserve, with restrooms at both ends and a wildlife list that includes foxes, coyotes, hawks, and the occasional deer.
- Segment 13 carries you north past the Belleview Trailhead and across the city line into Cherry Hills Village, opening into Blackmer Common's grasslands on the way to Three Pond Park.
Two of those three segments sit entirely inside Greenwood Village's borders. The third is the one that quietly walks you out of it, past the Belleview Trailhead and into Cherry Hills Village without so much as a sign to mark the change.
The Water Nobody Sees
Here's the part that doesn't show up on a trail map. The canal that gives this path its name hasn't been doing the work of watering the trees along it for years, which is exactly why Greenwood Village, Arapahoe County Open Spaces, and the Conservancy are jointly funding a new system to do that job instead. The first phase, concentrated on the Marjorie Perry Nature Preserve, is already under construction and runs on a groundwater well rather than canal flow.
| Phase | Focus | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Marjorie Perry Nature Preserve | Groundwater well in place, irrigation being installed |
| Phase 2 | Remainder of the canal's reach through Greenwood Village | Construction could begin this fall |
That second phase matters if you use this trail regularly, because it means the stretch you're walking today could look and sound different by winter: equipment staging, temporary closures, new irrigation lines cut into ground that's currently just packed gravel and root systems. None of that is a problem. It's just useful to know before you plan a longer loop and find a section fenced off for a few weeks.
The Sunday That Actually Works
None of this changes the fact that the best way to spend a Sunday here still starts at Belleview Station. People + Produce runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through October 11, 2026, with more than 50 vendors, a beer garden, live music, and a dog park where leashed dogs can burn off energy before or after a walk. Street parking is free, and the on-site lot is free for the first three hours before switching to a dollar an hour, which is more than enough time to shop the market and walk the short loop out to the Nature Preserve and back.
The routine that actually holds up, week after week, looks something like this: park at Belleview Station, walk the half mile or so out Segment 12 toward the Nature Preserve while the irrigation work is still visible along the fence line, turn back before the trail crosses into Cherry Hills Village, and land back at the market in time for the produce that hasn't sold out. It's not a scenic detour. It's the same loop most regulars have already found on their own, minus the part where they know why the trees are still green.
That last part is worth sitting with for a second. A canal stopped being a canal in any functional sense a long time ago, and the only reason the shade you're walking under still exists is that three different agencies decided it was worth paying to keep alive artificially. Most infrastructure like that stays invisible until it breaks. This is the rare case where you can watch it get rebuilt in real time, one groundwater well and one fall construction season at a time.
If you're the kind of resident who notices things like this about a place, that instinct tends to be useful well beyond a Sunday walk. Whenever you're thinking through what's actually happening in the Greenwood Village market, not just what a listing photo shows, Abram Sloss is glad to talk it through. Schedule a consultation whenever the timing is right.
