Upper Tampa Bay Trail Seeks Expansion Amidst Repairs

A chunk of the Upper Tampa Bay Trail shut down Jan. 7. Workers need to replace a culvert that got wrecked when hurricanes Helene and Milton tore through in October 2024. You'll find the closed stretch east of Sheldon Road and north of the Channel A waterway near West Waters Avenue.

No one can use that part until repairs wrap up. Officials say it'll stay closed for weeks, but weather might change that. The county hasn't given an exact date when it'll reopen.

The closest trailheads sit at 9201 W. Waters Ave. and 10338 Wilsky Blvd. Between them, you can access the trail from several spots in the neighborhoods.

This 11.45-mile paved path follows Channel A in the south, starting just north of Memorial Highway. From there it runs north through Town 'N' Country, passing near Westchase, Citrus Park, and Odessa before continuing north from Van Dyke Road and then heading east to the trailhead on Lutz Lake Fern Road.

Around 300,000 visitors hit the path each year. They walk. They jog. They bike and inline skate. The trail also connects people to off-trail hiking at the county's Brooker Creek Headwaters and Town 'N' Country nature preserves.

A 2-mile gap still exists between Peterson and Van Dyke roads, and a study is trying to determine the best way to close it.

The trail sits on an old railroad route that W.P. Lutz, an Odessa sawmill owner, built in 1909. Tampa Gulf Coast Railway ran three trains daily with stops in Keystone, Gulf Pine, Lake Fern, and Cosme until the 1960s when operations ended.

Hillsborough County has upgraded this section quite a bit over the past 18 months. A four-lane bridge in front of the Northwest County Solid Waste Facility at 8001 W. Linebaugh Ave. took a beating and needed bridge and guardrail fixes. Crews shored up the banks around the bridge and repaired sidewalks, ripping out and replacing chunks of them in 2025.

Back in June, the county opened a $2.2 million bridge on the trail. It replaced a 112-year-old wooden bridge that had become unstable in 2024. "Rocky Creek Bridge) is one of 279 bridges maintained and under Hillsborough County Public Works," District 2 County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who has served since 2002, said at the time, according to the Tampa Beacon. "And (Upper Tampa Bay Trail) is an important trail to the county, a popular one to the community."

Ken Hagan also announced in June that $7 million had been secured for a $10 million project to connect the path to the Suncoast Trail through Hillsborough to Pasco, Hernando, and Citrus counties.