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Texas Bicentennial Trail Report
Following the signing of the Texas Bicentennial Trail Bill by Governor Greg Abbott in 2025, Great Springs Project is proud to release the 2026 Progress Report for the Texas Bicentennial Trail in the Great Springs Project Corridor.
The goals of the Bicentennial Trail and Great Springs Project are aligned by design. Great Springs Project’s work extends beyond the 125-mile Texas Bicentennial Trail to the larger 300+ mile Great Springs Trail Network, connecting more communities, cities, and counties, and will extend past the Texas Bicentennial.
This report shows the routes and progress of all trails in the Great Springs Trail Network, and those under consideration as of 2026 for inclusion as a part of the Texas Bicentennial Trail. This Report will be updated annually, as GSP, the General Land Office, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department work together to develop new and expanded trails from the Alamo to the Capitol.
Project Partners
Frequently Asked Questions
We still have an opportunity to conserve land over the Edwards Aquifer and the life-sustaining waters that run through it. Conservation and trails go hand-in-hand, protecting our waters and communities while simultaneously creating spaces to connect people to nature and offer a vital community resource for health, active transportation, outdoor recreation, and economic development.
As one of the fastest growing regions in the U.S., those opportunities will become fewer and further between as residential and commercial development fills the open spaces between Austin and San Antonio. These trails have the potential to yield hundreds of millions of dollars of positive impact to the region’s economy annually through land and water conservation benefits, water and air quality improvements, carbon emission reductions, and healthcare impacts. Growth in the tourism economy spurred by the trail will create or sustain potentially thousands of jobs annually and yield billions of dollars in property value increases.
The trail will connect Austin to San Antonio, connecting to Barton Springs, San Marcos Springs, Comal Springs, and San Antonio Springs. In some places, the trail is already built, like sections of the Violet Crown Trail or the Howard Peak Greenway System. In other places, trail alignments have been planned by local communities. Great Springs Project works to connect and unify these existing community visions into a comprehensive trail system connecting everyone from the Alamo to the Capitol. Great Springs Project routes trails needed to connect between communities – aiming to connect with community centers, parks, libraries, and other local assets.
This depends on many factors, but the overall goal is to have the approximately 125-mile Texas Bicentennial Trail built and contiguously connected by 2036, with sections of trail along the route being built in phases. The order of phases will depend on key factors such as funding, establishing right-of-way, permitting, design, and construction. For more information on what is opening in the new future, please review the Texas Bicentennial Trail Report.
Any project of this magnitude requires many sources of investment. Similar long-distance regional trail systems in other parts of the country have had success in leveraging local, state, and federal funding with private investment. These types of projects also generate high annual economic returns on investment, creating continued value for local communities. A similar approach is envisioned for Great Springs Project.
A conservation easement is a written, legal agreement between a property owner and a “holder” of the conservation easement, under which a landowner voluntarily restricts certain uses of the property in order to protect its natural, productive, or cultural features. The holder of the conservation easement must be a governmental entity or a qualified conservation organization (land trust). The landowner conveys the easement to the holder similar to the conveyance of a deed, and the easement is recorded in land and title records at the county courthouse. The landowner retains legal title to the property and determines the types of land uses to continue, as well as those to restrict.
As part of the arrangement, the landowner grants the holder of the conservation easement the right to periodically assess the condition of the property to ensure that it is being maintained according to the terms of the legal agreement. A landowner who grants a conversation easement retains ownership of the land, while agreeing to abide by the terms of the conservation easement. Once in place, the conservation easement is legally binding on all future owners of the land.
A core value of Great Springs Project is respect for land and landowners. We encourage our partner communities along the corridor to engage with willing landowners who participate in this process on a voluntary basis. We do not endorse the use of eminent domain, except for rare cases in which it is preferred by the landowner. While GSP can facilitate connections between landowners and other stakeholders, we envision most actual land-related transactions to occur between landowners, land trusts, and local community trail operators and managers.
More specific landowner concerns for this type of project can include privacy, trespassing, protection of livestock, and liability. These are all valid concerns. In other similar trail projects, these concerns have been addressed through a combination of written agreements; an understanding of recreational use statutes that help protect landowners from liability; and most importantly through careful design of the trail, trail alignment, vegetative screening, buffers, and fencing. Participating landowners should drive these types of site-level trail alignment and design decisions.
In 2023, GSP launched the next phase of conservation outreach: direct door-to-door landowner engagement. With more than 95% of land in Texas privately owned, landowners play a vital role in the state’s conservation and connectivity future. GSP will initiate engaging discussions with key landowners in our region regarding the environmental, ecological, economic, and health benefits of our land conservation and connectivity mission. Guided by a core value of respect for private land and landowners as willing partners, we will provide information about the many ways landowners can benefit by partnering with Great Springs Project and how their concerns can be addressed to create a healthier, connected, and sustainable environment.
When available, we encourage you to participate in GSP public surveys, webinars, and events, and by helping us spread the word about these engagement opportunities via social media and word of mouth. There will also be opportunities in the coming months and years when voicing your support for the project with your elected officials will be welcomed and encouraged.
If you have other ideas about how you can help, or if you represent an organization, business, or landowner that is interested in becoming a project partner, please contact us at info@greatspringsproject.org. To support Great Springs Project, make a donation towards advancing the mission of Land in Conservation & Trail on the Ground
Several local community websites provide great information on the many places you can hike and bike along the future Texas Bicentennial Trail, today:
Austin
Violet Crown Trail
Ann and Roy Butler Trail
McKinney Falls State Park
Buda
Garlic Creek Trail
Stagecoach Park
Kyle
Plum Creek Trail
San Marcos
Purgatory Creek Trail
Spring Lake Trail
Limestone Link Trail
New Braunfels
Landa Park
Alligator Creek Trail
Headwaters at the Comal
Schertz
Forest Ridge Park
Selma
Historic Evans Road Trail
Universal City
Cibolo Creek Trail
San Antonio
Howard W. Peak Greenway Trails
San Antonio River Trails
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