On January 3, 2026, one visitor drove out hoping to reach the summit of Kennesaw Mountain by car one last time before the road closed for good. He found the shuttle down for rain and ended up walking the mile and a half to the top like everyone else. Three days later, on January 6, the National Park Service made that walk the only option most visitors would have going forward. Private vehicles were banned from Mountain Road for good.
Most people who live near the mountain treat that story as finished. It isn't. Five months later, on June 4, the City of Marietta broke ground on a $17 million trail project elsewhere in the city, one designed to eventually link that same mountain to the Chattahoochee River on a continuous path. The two projects share an ambition that nobody has spelled out plainly: Marietta is trying to become a place you can move through on foot or by bike, end to end, without a car. That shift is happening in real time this year, in pieces, and knowing which pieces are finished versus which ones are still just lines on a GDOT concept map will save you a wasted trip this fall.
What Actually Changed on Mountain Road
The National Park Service didn't ban cars from Kennesaw Mountain Drive on a whim. Park Superintendent Patrick Gammon laid out the math at a public meeting: the road is "only 20 feet wide," with a steep grade and nine blind curves, and it was carrying close to 1.5 million visitors in 2024 alone. Cars, cyclists, and pedestrians were sharing a lane never built for all three at once, and near misses had become routine.
So as of January 6, 2026, private vehicles no longer travel the 1.5-mile paved road to the summit. In their place, a shuttle now runs the route, and a newly striped pedestrian lane keeps walkers separated from bikes and buses. The unpaved one-mile hiking trail to the top was never part of this change and remains open exactly as it was.
Here's what that means if you're planning a trip up the mountain this fall:
| If you want to | Your access window |
|---|---|
| Ride the shuttle to the summit | Runs daily, roughly every 30 minutes, between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. |
| Bike the paved road | Permitted daily 7:30–10:00 a.m. and 4:30–8:30 p.m., shifting to 6:00 p.m. in winter |
| Walk the paved road | Use the new striped pedestrian lane, available whenever the road is open |
| Hike the unpaved summit trail | Unaffected, open dawn to dusk as always |
The pedestrian lane still gets crowded. A hiker named Ann Wright, who climbs the mountain with her brother every Tuesday, told CBS News Atlanta she's watched people speed past strollers and bikes for years, which is exactly the behavior the new lane system is meant to fix.
A Trail Groundbreaking, Same Logic
Five months after the mountain lost its cars, the city broke ground on the piece meant to connect it to everything else. On June 4, 2026, at 2 p.m., officials gathered near the intersection of Alumni Drive and Koger Drive to mark the start of construction on Phase 1 of the Rottenwood Creek Trail, a three-mile multi-use path running from the Kennesaw State University-Marietta campus east to the Franklin Gateway Sports Complex.
The project is part of what Cobb County Courier described as a long-range vision of an east-west connector between Kennesaw Mountain and the Chattahoochee River, and the $17 million price tag reflects a real, funded construction contract rather than a wish list. The project's construction bid documents allow the contractor up to three years, or 1,095 calendar days, to finish the work, which means full build-out could stretch as far as 2029 even if individual sections open sooner.
An earlier environmental review flagged about four acres of impact to Wildwood Park along the route, though city officials said at the time the effect on the park would be minor. That review is years old, but the footprint it describes is the same one crews are now building through.
The Network Nobody's Fully Built Yet
Here's the part that gets lost when these two stories run separately in local news. Marietta doesn't have one trail system waiting to be finished. It has three pieces at three different stages, and knowing which is which changes how you use any of it this year.
Already open, ride it today. The Mountain to River (M2R) Trail already connects Kennesaw Mountain south through the city, past the Kennestone Hospital area, into Historic Downtown Square, and on to Brown Park and the City Cemetery, a 3.5-mile stretch within Marietta's limits that's part of a longer 13.5-mile regional route. Separately, a paved three-mile trail already runs along the Chattahoochee River and Rottenwood Creek near Cumberland, connecting to the Bob Callan Trail, popular with everyone from stroller-pushing parents to early-morning cyclists.
Under construction now, expect closures near it. The three-mile Phase 1 segment that broke ground in June, running from Alumni Drive to Franklin Gateway, is an active job site as of this writing. If your regular walk or ride passes anywhere near the KSU-Marietta campus or Wildwood Park, expect fencing, equipment, and detours for the foreseeable future.
Approved on paper, not yet under construction. Phase II, which would carry the trail south and east across I-75 to the intersection of Delk and Bentley Roads before tying into the existing Bob Callan trailhead at Terrell Mill Road, has a GDOT-approved concept report. The next step is engineering and design, which means dirt hasn't moved on this segment and won't for a while.
Put those three stages together and you get the actual shape of what's happening: the city is stitching together trail segments that already work on their own into one line that will eventually run from the mountain to the river. It's not finished. It's not close to finished. But for the first time, every piece of it has either funding, a construction contract, or an approved concept behind it.
Planning Around What Exists, Not What's Coming
If you're deciding how to spend a Saturday in Marietta right now, work with the pieces that are actually built. The M2R Trail already gets you from Kennesaw Mountain into the Square today, no waiting required, and the paved Rottenwood/Bob Callan trail near Cumberland is a solid option if you want river views without construction noise. Save the Alumni Drive to Franklin Gateway corridor for later this year or next, once the current build wraps and the connection to the sports complex actually opens.
If the mountain itself is the destination, build your day around the access windows rather than fighting them. The shuttle's 9:30 to 4:30 window covers most casual visits fine. If you're a cyclist who wants the summit before the shuttle crowds show up, the early morning window closes at 10 a.m. sharp, so plan to be off the road well before then.
None of this is really about real estate. It's about a city investing real money in how its residents actually move through it, on the same year that a national park unit next door decided cars were the problem, not the solution. That kind of coordinated bet on walkability and trail access is the sort of thing that shapes a place's character over years, not headlines.
If you're watching Marietta closely enough to care how a trail groundbreaking connects to a mountain road closure, you already understand this city better than most people searching listings ever will. When you're ready to talk about what that local knowledge is worth, Richie Rich Atlanta starts every conversation the same way: with a free, custom marketing plan built around the neighborhood you actually live in.
