Walk the Fanno Creek Trail from Main Street toward Durham this fall and you won't hit a single stretch where the pavement just stops. That's new. For most of the last few years, this walk meant ducking onto a sidewalk near Ash Avenue, picking the trail back up past the library, then losing it again somewhere around 85th, waiting for construction fencing to clear before you could finish the loop out to the Ki-a-Kuts Bridge. The trail existed. It just didn't connect.
Three separate construction efforts changed that, and they wrapped within about four and a half months of each other. Most people who've lived here long enough to remember the old detours haven't caught up to what that actually means yet.
Three finish lines, one after another
The City Hall segment, running from Ash Avenue to Hall Boulevard, reached substantial completion on November 20, 2024. The Library segment, connecting Tigard Public Library to Milton Court, followed on January 8, 2025. The Durham segment, from 85th Avenue south of Durham Road out to the Ki-a-Kuts Bridge, closed out on March 4, 2025.
That same January, a separate extension opened off the library's book drop loop, carrying the trail into the Fields Natural Area for the first time. Twenty-six acres of mixed woodland and meadow sit between Fanno Creek and the Portland & Western Railroad's Fuller Yard, and until this extension, most Tigard residents had no trail access to it at all.
Four projects. Four different completion dates. One result: a trail that used to be a collection of neighborhood amenities is now something closer to a single walk across town.
What that walk actually passes
The route earns its reputation as more than a paved line through backyards. Near where the trail shifts from downtown into its wooded stretch, aerosol artist Ashley Montague was commissioned to turn a 100-foot retaining wall into a geometric mural, the kind of piece that makes the transition from sidewalk to creekside feel intentional rather than incidental. Farther along, at the LED-lit underpass where the trail slips beneath Highway 99W at Main Street, muralist Jeremy Nichols painted a native wildlife scene sized to the passage, visible to hikers, cyclists, and skateboarders as they pass through.
Near Hall Boulevard, the trail runs close to the historic Augustus Fanno Farmhouse. Fanno was among the first American pioneers to settle in Washington County, arriving in 1846, and the onion farm his family started there ran until the 1940s. It's the reason the creek, the trail, and half the parks along it carry his name.
Dirksen Nature Park, on the stretch between Tigard Street and Tiedeman Avenue, protects a remnant of oak savanna. Less than 2 percent of that historic habitat still exists anywhere in the Willamette Valley, and the park's soft-surface trails lead to a boardwalk that pushes out into a forested wetland most drivers on 99W have no idea is back there. Keep walking and you'll reach Woodard Park, where ponderosa pines and old oaks shade the spot where Fanno Creek meets Derry Dell Creek.
None of this is new scenery. What's new is being able to walk through all of it without a gap.
The one crossing that hasn't caught up
There's a reason this connected trail still asks you to stop and think at one specific point. The Hall Boulevard crossing runs on a pedestrian-activated rapid-flashing beacon, not a full signal. You press a button, the beacon flashes, and you're trusting drivers on a state highway to notice and yield. The crossing has a documented history of crashes and near misses, and limited sight distance is part of the reason why.
That's about to change, on paper at least. The Oregon Department of Transportation is running a project under OR 141 that adds two new Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons, upgrading the existing crossing at the trail itself and installing a new ground-mounted beacon with a median island at SW Omara Street. Six new ADA-compliant curb ramps come with it. As of the most recent project update, design work runs through early 2026, with construction targeted for summer 2026, though ODOT's own project notes flag that the schedule is subject to change.
For a sense of what that timeline might actually look like on the ground, ODOT already ran a nearly identical upgrade a few blocks away. New RRFBs at SW Spruce Street and SW Hemlock Street broke ground in June 2025 and were finished by December 2025, a six-month build. If the Hall Boulevard and Omara Street work follows a similar pace once it starts, this is a project that could be done within the same year it begins.
It also isn't the first safety change on this stretch of Hall Boulevard. Back in March 2023, ODOT and the city lowered the speed limit there from 40 to 30 miles per hour between SW 92nd Avenue and SW Pfaffle Street. The trail crossing beacons are the next piece of a corridor that's been getting fixed one project at a time for a few years now.
What's already visible this year
The connective work isn't finished just because the four big segments are done. As recently as this past June, the trail closed for two full days, June 16 through 18, between Grant Avenue and Main Street, so crews could pour new ADA ramps along Grant as part of the city's pavement management program. Anyone walking the trail that week got routed onto Johnson Street or the Tigard Street Heritage Trail instead.
It was a short closure, but it's a preview of what regular trail users should expect once the Hall Boulevard beacon project moves from design into construction. That project's own estimate put construction starting sometime this summer, so signage near the crossing may already be up by the time you read this, or it may still be a few weeks out if the timeline slipped, which ODOT's own notes acknowledge is possible. Either way, the pattern so far has been short, dated closures rather than long-term shutdowns, the same as Grant Avenue this June, which is worth knowing before you plan a longer walk or ride through that stretch.
The trail spent years feeling like three or four separate parks that happened to share a creek. Now it reads as one route, with one honest gap left in it, and that gap has a project number and a construction window attached to it for the first time.
Walk the whole route this fall, and at Hall Boulevard press the button, wait for the beacon to flash, and confirm traffic has stopped in both directions before you step off the curb. If the newly connected Fanno Creek Trail has you curious about the streets that sit along it, Rebecca Lee Real Estate invites you to reach out with your questions.
