The Naples Trail Loop That No Longer Ends at Baker Park

If you've ridden the Gordon River Greenway enough times to know it by feel rather than by map, you probably learned the same shorthand everyone else did: cross the Blair Foundation Bridge, land in Baker Park, turn around. That was the trail. Golden Gate Parkway to the river to the park and back, a little under two miles each way, done.

That shorthand is already out of date twice over this year, and not in the same direction. On one end, a stretch of pavement got quietly extended past the spot the county has always called its official terminus. On the other, Collier County shut down a piece of the path for two full days this summer, which is its own kind of proof that the trail is still being worked on rather than simply maintained. Neither change is the region's showcase trail project, the Paradise Coast Trail. That one opened its own first segment somewhere else in the county entirely, while the piece of it that would eventually run closest to this corridor is still sitting in an engineering study.

The Bridge That Used to Mark the End

The Gordon River Greenway itself has never had a perfectly agreed-upon length. Collier County's parks page describes it as stretching over two miles from Golden Gate Parkway to Central Avenue. The Greenway's own nonprofit site puts the trail system at 2.5 miles of asphalt, mulch, and boardwalk. Neither number is wrong exactly, they're just measuring slightly different versions of the same corridor, which is a small reminder that even the official paperwork on this trail has never fully settled.

What isn't in dispute is the bridge. The Blair Foundation Bridge, finished by the City of Naples in 2018, is what joined the Greenway to Baker Park and turned a dead-end nature walk into a loop with a destination on the other side. Baker Park opened the following October, and today the Baker Park Loop runs 1.3 miles around the property, past the Eva Sugden-Gomez Center, the splash pad, and the kayak launch, directly across the street from the Naples Dog Park. Walk the whole thing, bridge included, and you're logging a route that passes through six different native plant communities, with reported sightings along the way running from herons and egrets to otters, bobcats, and the occasional bald eagle.

That was the known trail. It had a beginning near Golden Gate Parkway, a middle through the mangroves, and an end at Baker Park's riverfront lawn.

Who Actually Paid to Move That Line

The end moved this year, and not because the city budgeted for it.

Naples Airport's own governing board, the Naples Airport Authority, funded an extension that connects the Greenway's official terminus point near the Collier Mosquito Control District to two additional endpoints: the airport's own Observation Deck, and Baker Park. The same board action authorized removing exotic vegetation, restoring pathways, and rejuvenating a pond near North Road.

That's worth sitting with for a second. The airport, not the parks department, paid to push the trail past the line the county has always drawn as its finish. If you've walked or biked the Greenway assuming the Observation Deck spur was always part of the plan, it wasn't the city's plan at all. It's an airport authority project, tucked into the same corridor, extending a public trail on a separate budget with a separate set of goals, mainly reducing wildlife interactions near flight paths and improving stormwater handling around North Road's pond system.

None of that changes the mangroves or the boardwalk underfoot. It changes where the loop is now allowed to stop.

A Closure That Proves Someone's Still Tending It

In early June, Collier County's Conservation Collier Program closed a section of the pathway at the Gordon River Greenway Preserve, near the Golden Gate Parkway approach, for two full days, Wednesday and Thursday, running 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days. The reason was straightforward: removing dead trees standing immediately next to the path.

A short closure for a tree removal isn't dramatic news on its own. What it demonstrates is that this particular stretch of the Greenway, the county-owned Preserve section rather than the city-run Baker Park side, is still being actively managed as a hazard-monitored corridor rather than a finished amenity nobody revisits. If a tree comes down near the path, someone at Conservation Collier is watching closely enough to schedule its removal and post a public notice about the closure window. That's a small operational detail, and it's also the clearest evidence that this section of trail isn't a static feature. It gets worked on.

Seven Miles Opened Somewhere Else in the County

None of this is the region's marquee trail project. That's the Paradise Coast Trail, the Naples Pathways Coalition's long-running push for a paved, road-separated pathway system eventually meant to connect Naples to Bonita Springs, Ave Maria, Marco Island, and beyond. The organization now describes on its own site that the first seven-mile section is open, a genuinely new, constructed piece of the eventual 70-mile network, built and usable today for walking, running, and biking somewhere in Collier County.

The segment most people in this part of Naples would actually care about, the one running along Livingston Road and the Veterans Memorial Boulevard corridor toward the Lee County line, is not that segment. According to the coalition's own May 2026 update from Executive Director Michelle Avola-Brown, that stretch is still in an active Project Development and Environment study, the engineering phase that has to close out before construction bidding can even start. It covers roughly 11.5 miles from near Bonita Beach Road down to Radio Road, and it's the piece designed to eventually link up with the proposed Bonita Estero Rail Trail heading north.

The Livingston Road corridor is the northern entryway that lets the Bonita Estero Rail Trail and the Paradise Coast Trail function as one connected network. It isn't built yet. It's still in study.

So the honest version of where things stand: one piece of the Paradise Coast Trail is open and rideable right now, just not the piece nearest this corridor. The piece that would eventually reach toward this side of the county is still on paper. Two true things, pointing in different directions, both current as of this year.

What's Actually Walkable Today

Put the pieces together and here's what a resident can actually do on foot or by bike this fall, without waiting on anything still in study:

• Start at the Golden Gate Parkway trailhead, across from Freedom Park, and follow the paved and boardwalk sections south.
• Take the short spur west to the Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens if you want the loop with a stop.
• Continue south past the Naples Airport's western edge, where the airport-funded extension now carries the path further than the county's original terminus, toward the Observation Deck.
• Cross the Blair Foundation Bridge into Baker Park and complete the 1.3-mile loop past the kayak launch and splash pad.
• Exit at Riverside Circle, across from the Naples Dog Park, if you're done, or keep going toward downtown if you're not.

Riders who've logged the fuller version of this route on trail-tracking apps have reported round trips as long as 14.5 miles when they extend past Baker Park toward Gulfshore Boulevard and Lowdermilk Park before turning back, a distance that wasn't really available as a continuous option before the bridge and the park both existed.

None of that mileage touches the Paradise Coast Trail yet. That connection is still a few budget cycles and one finished engineering study away. What changed this year changed quietly, on two separate ledgers, an airport board's capital project on one end and a county tree-removal crew on the other, both nudging the same familiar loop slightly past where you last remembered it stopping.

If watching how this corridor keeps reshaping itself, one funding source and one closure notice at a time, is part of what makes this stretch of Naples worth paying attention to, that kind of local detail is exactly what Maria Oddy tracks for clients thinking about this part of town. Reach out any time to schedule a consultation.