If you live in The Crossing, you already know the trailhead. It sits at the neighborhood's own entrance off Mahar Road, the county road most people call CR 164, with a small parking area, a covered pavilion, and a water fountain that's been there long enough to feel like part of the landscape rather than infrastructure. What most residents don't know is that this spot was never a side entrance to something else. It sits on a stretch of old Cotton Belt railroad bed, the same corridor that once carried freight through this part of Smith County before Tyler ever thought about paving it for walkers and cyclists. The trail didn't arrive at The Crossing's doorstep by accident. The neighborhood grew up around a route that was already there.
That history matters more this year than it has in a while, because 2026 is when the rest of the city's trail system finally started catching up to what The Crossing has had all along.
A Trailhead That Predates the System Around It
The section of Legacy Trail that runs past The Crossing is part of Phase I, the original 4.5-mile stretch that opened in July 2019 and connects the Three Lakes Parkway trailhead near Fresh by Brookshires to a trailhead in Gresham, the small community just southwest of Tyler. The Crossing's own access point, just south of Crosslake Boulevard on Mahar Road, is one of only two designated parking areas on that entire stretch, the other being at Three Lakes Parkway itself. Covered pavilions exist at exactly three points on Phase I: the Three Lakes trailhead, the Gresham trailhead, and the intersection at The Crossing and Mahar. That's rare company for a residential entrance to be keeping.
Most people who bike or walk that stretch are passing through The Crossing's front door without stopping to notice they've arrived at one of the system's original anchor points, not an afterthought bolted on later.
What Actually Opened in January
In January 2026, the city cut the ribbon on Legacy Trail Phase II, a separate 1.7-mile section that runs from the future site of Stewart Park on Frankston Highway, through W.E. Winters Park, and ends near Peete Elementary School. It cost roughly $2.7 million, funded through a mix of half-cent sales tax revenue and a TxDOT grant, and took nearly two years to build.
"It's been a very long project. We've been working on it for almost two years," said Leanne Robinette, the city's Director of Parks and Recreation, at the ribbon cutting.
Here's the part that matters for anyone reading this from inside The Crossing: Phase II is nowhere near you. It sits on the north side of Tyler, an entirely different section of the city, and as of this year it is not physically connected to the trail that runs past your own trailhead. The two segments exist as separate pieces of the same long-term plan, not one continuous path you could currently walk between.
The Piece That Actually Reaches The Crossing
The connector that would matter to Crossing residents is Phase III, and it's tied to a bigger project: the widening of Old Jacksonville Highway from four lanes to six. City officials have said for a couple of years now that this phase would bridge the gap between the Three Lakes Parkway trailhead and the newer Stewart Park section to the north, and construction on that Old Jacksonville corridor work was slated to begin in 2026. The city's own trail planning documents still describe a "possible extension from Three Lakes Parkway to the South Tyler and Rose Rudman Trails, linking our trail system" as a future goal rather than a finished one.
That's the honest state of things as of this fall. Phase II opened. Phase I has run past The Crossing's front gate for seven years. The link between them is the project actually worth watching, because it's the one that would turn the trailhead at Mahar Road from an entrance into a through-route, connecting a resident who walks out the neighborhood gate all the way north toward Rose Rudman and eventually, on paper at least, toward the Rose Garden itself.
What's Already Walkable From Your Own Gate
None of this changes what's already sitting at the trailhead today. The Market at The Crossing occupies about 17,400 square feet just off that same corridor, built with the kind of stone tile and carved wood doors that read more like a small European square than a strip center, and it backs directly onto the trail system. It's pet friendly, has outdoor seating, and sits adjacent to Fresh by Brookshires, the grocery store that anchors the other end of this same Phase I stretch at Three Lakes Parkway.
Inside and around the Market, the businesses residents actually use include:
- The Luscious Crumb, a bakery that's become one of the Market's better-known stops
- Identity Med Spa and Salon
- 20 Two 10, a women's boutique
- Spinout, a younger-skewing boutique a short distance from the Market itself
For a resident on foot or bike, that's a bakery run and a shopping stop that don't require pulling out of the neighborhood onto Old Jacksonville Highway at all.
The Layer That Doesn't Show Up in Any Trail Report
None of the trail mileage or funding numbers explain why The Crossing feels lived-in rather than just landscaped. That comes from the neighborhood's own calendar. Residents organize Easter egg hunts each spring, informal evening gatherings that amount to neighbors pulling chairs into driveways, and snow cone trucks that show up on hot afternoons the way an ice cream truck used to. None of that requires the trail or the Market to happen, but both give those gatherings somewhere to spill into. A driveway conversation turns into a walk to the pavilion. A snow cone truck parked near Crosslake Boulevard turns into an excuse to cut through to the Market for something else.
That combination, a neighborhood entrance that happens to be original trail infrastructure, a retail court built to be walked to rather than driven to, and a social rhythm that predates both, is not something you'll find written about The Crossing anywhere else, because most of what's published about this neighborhood treats the trail, the Market, and the HOA calendar as three separate line items instead of one connected fact.
What This Means for the Rest of the Year
If you live here, the practical takeaway is simple: keep an eye on the Old Jacksonville Highway widening project this year. That construction, unglamorous as a highway expansion sounds, is the one piece of infrastructure standing between The Crossing's trailhead and a trail network that reaches all the way to the north side of Tyler. Everything else, the pavilion, the Market, the Easter egg hunts, is already working exactly as it was built to. The gap that's closing is the one most residents have never had a reason to think about, because until this year, there wasn't a Phase II on the other end to make the missing link visible.
If you're weighing a move to The Crossing, or thinking about what a home here is actually worth to someone who'd use it the way current residents do, The Agency Tyler can walk you through what's happening on the ground, not just what's listed. Reach out for a free home valuation and a conversation about what this neighborhood is becoming, not just what it already is.
