Downtown Travelers Rest Has a Loop to Walk This Fall
October 15, 2026
October 15, 2026
At 10 a.m. on Thursday, October 1, the City of Travelers Rest held a grand reopening for a stretch of road. The Poinsett Highway Streetscape Project was finished, and the corridor between Main Street and State Hwy. 25 was open to through traffic for the first time in years.
Downtown Travelers Rest has two streets again. Main Street and Poinsett Highway now connect as a loop you can walk, bike or drive. That reopening came just as the town's fall calendar got going, with events on Main Street, at Trailblazer Park and in the shops along Poinsett.
WSPA reported that city officials put the project's cost at more than $9 million. The work rebuilt and repaved the road and added lighting, pedestrian crossings and stormwater improvements. It also added a multimodal path for walking and biking. The same report said the traffic changes included a new signal at North Poinsett Highway and Tubbs Mountain Road and a diagonal crossing at the intersection of Main Street and Center Street.
The city's project page describes the corridor's layout:
City project materials also describe two Main Street crossings planned for bikes and trail users. One is the diagonal bicycle crossing at Main and Center. The other is an all-stop crosswalk near Sunrift Adventures at Main Street and McElhaney Road, aimed at people coming off the Swamp Rabbit Trail.
City Administrator Shannon Herman explained the purpose of the project in a way that goes beyond traffic flow. Speaking to WSPA, she said:
"This was really the opportunity to move away from a linear one street, Main Street, into more of a geometric central business district and so this is it. We're here."
A geometric business district means you can walk downtown as a circuit instead of going up and back along one street. That only works if the second street has places worth stopping at, and Poinsett does.
The city's Spring 2026 project update said all businesses would remain open and accessible during construction. These are the corridor businesses currently listed in the city's own directories:
In August, WYFF reported that customers had spent years working around the construction, often on long detours, to reach businesses on the corridor. The station spoke with Leopard Forest Coffee Company and with Greg Gimpel and Smiley Miles, co-owners of Chicora Alley Fire House. Both talked about how much loyal customers had meant while the road was torn up. "That's what it's about. It's the friendships and relationships that we build here," Gimpel and Miles told WYFF.
Even before the official ceremony, the reopening was already showing results. Once both lanes were open, Leopard Forest barista Emma Bradford told WYFF, "This week we've already seen tremendous growth since both lanes of the road are now opened, so that's been really exciting to see and really refreshing." At the October ceremony, city leaders thanked the shop and restaurant owners on Poinsett for their patience and asked the community to come back and shop and dine there.
The fall calendar puts some events on Main Street and others at Trailblazer Park. The reopened corridor connects the two, so you no longer have to treat downtown as one long line. Here's a sample fall afternoon built from what's on the city's directories and calendars this month:
The loop works on any afternoon. Some dates this fall add more to it.
Here is what's left on the fall calendar as of mid-October, grouped by where each event takes place.
On Main Street
At Trailblazer Park, 235 Trailblazer Drive
Trailblazer Park also has something quieter on the schedule. A new Tai Chi class for seniors began October 8 in the park's amphitheater and meets on select Thursdays through December. It's led by Christopher O'Loughlin, who has practiced Tai Chi Chuan since 1987, and no experience is needed.
Two Saturdays stand out. October 31 starts with Halloween Fest at Trailblazer Park at 2 p.m., the last day of the scarecrows on Main. November 28 has the Small Business Saturday market at the park from noon to 3 p.m., followed by the Holiday Hop on Main Street from 3 to 7 p.m. On both days, events run back to back at the park and on Main Street, and the reopened Poinsett corridor sits between them as a second way to get from one to the other.
Not every downtown project is finished. The city's August newsletter said the Main Street crosswalk was being moved from near the Gazebo toward the Pinestone walkway, with lighted pedestrian signals planned. We haven't seen confirmation that the work is complete. At Spring Park, the city lists the Rhodes Children's Botanical Garden as a future phase of the Dicey Langston Heritage Garden but hasn't given an opening date. Movies in the Park also returns to Trailblazer Park on the first Friday in December.
If you own a home near Poinsett Highway and wonder whether a finished corridor and new crossings change what your property is worth, Judy Johnson can look at it with you street by street. Get your free home valuation, and we'll walk through what the reopened corridor means for your block.
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