"We're excited to see bollards going in," said Irv Welling, chairman of Vision Cashiers, about the newest stretch of trail construction underway on the plateau this summer. It sounds like a small thing. Bollards are just posts, the kind that hold a light or a wayfinding sign. But the reason this particular batch is worth noticing is where they're headed: not around the Village Green, where the walking loop has lived for two years, but out toward Frank Allen Road, the library, and a residential community called Cashiers Lake that didn't exist when the original trail was cut.
That shift, from a downtown loop to a route that actually reaches houses and a school, is the part of this story that hasn't been told yet. Most coverage of the Cashiers Greenway Ramble treats it as a nice amenity for a stroll after lunch. The construction happening right now is doing something different. It's the first phase of the project built to get people somewhere, not just around something.
A Downtown Loop, Not Yet a Way Home
The Ramble has a longer history than most people walking it realize. The original Cashiers Walking Trail traces back to local merchant Bob Dews, then owner of the Laurelwood Inn, who raised $25,000 with friends in the mid-2000s to cut a path through town. Vision Cashiers, then called Village Conservancy, took over stewardship in 2018 and hired Equinox Environmental to build a formal master plan. Phase One, a one-mile loop connecting the Chamber of Commerce to the Village Green and the shops along the way, opened with a ribbon cutting at the Thomas Taulbee Memorial Greenway Entrance in late July 2024. A second loop, about three-quarters of a mile, followed with concrete boardwalks, crosswalks with pedestrian lights, and additional sidewalks, according to a Jackson County commissioners' work session recap from December 2024.
Walk that loop today and it's a genuinely pleasant errand. You can start at the Chamber, pass Hotel Cashiers and Slabtown Pizza, cut through the Village Green past the StoryWalk panels, and land back where you started with groceries or a coffee in hand. What it can't do yet is get you home, or get a kid to school, or connect you to anywhere you actually live if you're not renting a room above one of those shops.
What's Under Construction Right Now
That's the gap the current phase is built to close. As of late July 2026, construction crews are actively working on segments that connect U.S. Highway 64 at the Chamber of Commerce to Frank Allen Road, link N.C. Highway 107 to Frank Allen Road, and run improvements along Frank Allen Road itself. A separate connector is being built from the trail near the Albert Carlton-Cashiers Community Library out to the newly developing Cashiers Lake community, according to reporting from Smoky Mountain News and The Highlander.
As with earlier phases, this one is being built by local contractors donating their labor at cost:
| Contractor | Role on the project |
|---|---|
| Ben Riddle, Cashiers Construction | Rough pathway construction |
| Miguel Mireles, Mireles Landscaping Services | Finish construction |
| Arielle McIntyre, Kintyre Design | Landscape design and plantings |
| Bobby Botev, Highland Mark | Lighting and internet infrastructure |
The bollards Welling mentioned fall under Botev's scope of lighting and internet infrastructure, adding downlighting and fiber connectivity along the new stretches, features the master plan calls "smart village" infrastructure. It's a small detail that says something bigger: this isn't a trail through the woods. It's meant to function as connective infrastructure for a town with no public works department of its own to build it otherwise.
Why This Segment Is Different
Here's the part that changes how you should think about the Ramble. Once the library-to-Cashiers Lake connector is finished and it links up with future trail segments inside the Cashiers Lake development itself, students at Summit Charter School will be able to walk from campus to the library and to the Boys & Girls Club of the Plateau without needing a ride. That single fact reframes everything that came before it. Phase One served shoppers circling downtown for an afternoon. Phase Two added a wooded stretch that made the loop longer and prettier. This phase is the first one built around a household's actual weekly needs: school pickup, library storytime, an afternoon at the Boys & Girls Club.
That's a different kind of trail than the one that opened two summers ago, even though it shares a name and a nonprofit steward.
The Funding Quirk That Explains the Pace
If you've wondered why the Ramble arrives in scattered segments instead of one continuous build, the answer has less to do with construction logistics and more to do with how Cashiers is governed. Cashiers is unincorporated, meaning it has no mayor, no board of commissioners, and no municipal government of its own, a status confirmed on Jackson County's own site. Because of that, the Ramble doesn't qualify for the traditional state and federal trail funding an incorporated town could tap. There's no city hall to write the check.
Instead, the project runs on private license agreements with landowners, at-cost labor from contractors like the four listed above, and a mix of developer contributions and donations. In late 2024, Vision Cashiers president Paul Robshaw told Jackson County commissioners the full five-mile network was expected to cost $10 million. Developers building three new communities near town, including Cashiers Lake, agreed to construct and connect their own sidewalks as part of that plan, covering what Robshaw estimated at roughly half the total cost. The remaining balance falls to fundraising. As of late 2025, organizers reported having raised a little more than $3 million toward the $4 million still needed, helped along by a $212,000 grant from Jackson County announced last fall and reported by Smoky Mountain News.
That funding structure explains the patchwork pace better than any construction timeline could. Each new stretch of the Ramble opens roughly in step with each new commitment of land access, at-cost labor, or a donor check. There's no single contractor working through a master schedule. There's a nonprofit stitching together permission and philanthropy one segment at a time, which is also why residents who want to see the library-to-school connection finished sooner have more direct influence over the calendar than they would with almost any other public infrastructure project in the county.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
For anyone who already calls Cashiers home, the practical shift is this: the walk that used to end at the Village Green now keeps going. If your routine already includes the Locally Grown farm stand on the Green or a Friday evening at Groovin' on the Green, the same stretch of trail that gets you there is being extended toward the library and, eventually, toward Cashiers Lake and Frank Allen Road. The current map, along with updates on which segments are open versus still under construction, is maintained at cashiersramble.com, which is worth bookmarking if you walk this town regularly. It changes more often than you'd expect for a five-mile trail.
None of this is finished. The connector to Cashiers Lake is still being built as of this writing, and the segments along Frank Allen Road are active construction zones, not open pathways. But the direction is clear enough to name: after two decades of turning a downtown shopping loop into something residents actually enjoy, Cashiers is now building the parts of the Ramble meant to get you home, not just around.
If you're already living on the plateau and curious what a town investing this much in its own connectivity does for the value and character of your property, that's exactly the kind of question Candy Wood and the team at Great Smoky Mountain Homes spend their days answering block by block. Request Your Free Home Valuation and we'll walk you through what's changing in your corner of Cashiers, no obligation attached.
