Late Summer In Collier Hills: The One Saturday That Maps The Neighborhood

On the third or fourth Saturday of August, a stretch of Walthall Drive that usually holds nothing more than a few parked SUVs fills up before 8 a.m. Neighbors in race bibs walk down the hill toward Tanyard Creek Park, kids trail behind, and the Collier Hills Civic Association sets a start line in front of 2010 Walthall. An hour later everyone is back in their kitchens. It is the shortest, quietest big event in Buckhead.

It is also the clearest picture Collier Hills gives of itself all year. The neighborhood's real weekend geography is not the grid of 1930s and 1940s cottages between Collier Road and Peachtree Battle. It is the one-mile ribbon of Northside BeltLine Trail that stitches Tanyard Creek Park to Ardmore Park in one direction and to Bobby Jones Golf Course and Bitsy Grant Tennis Center in the other. The 5K is the weekend most residents actually walk the whole thing. The rest of the year, most of us use a quarter of it.

The race that traces the neighborhood

The Collier Hills 5K Fun Run/Walk is sponsored by the Collier Hills Civic Association and starts at 8 a.m. in front of 2010 Walthall, finishing down in Tanyard Creek Park with prizes, games, and a Dash race for kids ten and under. Street entrances into the neighborhood on Collier and Walthall and Echota and Northside are blocked off by 7:45 a.m., and race organizers ask people not to park near the start line; parking is directed to Walthall between Collier and 2014 Walthall, or on Greystone near Walthall. There are no public bathrooms in the park, and dogs are welcome as spectators but not as runners.

The route matters more than the time on your watch. It winds through the neighborhood streets, drops onto the BeltLine, and finishes in the meadow west of the creek. If you have lived here two years and never actually crossed the wooden trestle on foot, this is the morning you finally do.

Proceeds from recent races have supported neighborhood beautification. Past sponsor lists have included Flying Biscuit, Howell's Kitchen & Bar, Peachtree Battle Baskin Robbins, the Greystone Garden Club, and Orange Theory Howell Mill, which is a fair map of where the neighborhood actually spends its Saturdays before and after.

What Tanyard Creek actually connects

Most residents treat Tanyard Creek Park as a dog loop and a playground. It is a trailhead. The Northside Trail winds for 2.9 miles from I-75 through Tanyard Creek Park to Peachtree Creek, and the paved mile that runs through the park is the connective tissue of the whole west side of Buckhead.

Here is what you can reach on foot from the small lot at 460 Collier Road NW, without ever crossing a traffic light:

The Northside Trail is only a mile long, but it travels through Tanyard Creek Park and connects Ardmore Park and Atlanta Memorial Park, with numerous access points to the Collier Hills neighborhoods along the way. There is free parking on Collier Road with direct trail access via stairs, a sidewalk connection from Walthall between Collier and Greystone, granite stairs from Walthall Drive to the trail, and an entry through Tanyard Creek Park itself.

For a neighborhood the size of Collier Hills, that is an unusual density of trailheads. It is why the race can start on a residential street and finish inside a park without ever putting a runner in a car lane for long.

The park most locals only half-know

Tanyard Creek Park is 14.5 acres, and its most photographed feature is a wooden railway trestle that most first-time visitors do not expect to find in the middle of Buckhead. The trail passes under a wooden canopy beneath a 30-foot-tall wooden railway structure at just under a half mile. The tracks above are still active CSX line.

The park also happens to sit on a Civil War battlefield. The grounds once witnessed the Battle of Peachtree Creek during the Civil War, and historical markers throughout the park tell the story. Most parking-lot visitors read one marker at the top of the stairs and assume that is all there is. It is not. The markers continue along the trail and into the meadow.

A few things worth knowing if you use the park often:

• Two playgrounds, one for toddlers with baby swings and ride-on toys, one for ages 5 to 12 with a wooden play structure and slides.
• The park is open daily from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
• The small parking lot fills quickly during busy times, which is the practical case for walking in from Walthall.
• The parking-lot entrance is not stroller or wheelchair friendly; stairs lead down to the park and the trail. Strollers and wheels do better entering via the Walthall sidewalk.

The meadow west of the creek is the part first-time visitors miss entirely. It is where dogs run, where race-day snacks get eaten, and where the trail flattens enough for kids on scooters.

The magnolia layer

There is a quieter tradition running alongside the trail that is easy to overlook. Trees Atlanta hosts recurring Tree Care mornings in Tanyard Creek Park as part of the BeltLine Arboretum. The Atlanta BeltLine Arboretum includes 18 types of magnolias, and two magnolias in particular were planted just beyond the outfield wall of the former Ponce de Leon Park, where the Atlanta Crackers played baseball and where Babe Ruth and Eddie Mathews both hit home runs caught in the canopy; cuttings from those historic trees have been grown into new trees for the Arboretum and for parks and baseball fields around Atlanta.

Some of those descendants live along the Northside Trail. If you have wondered why the plantings between the trestle and Ardmore Park look more curated than a standard city park, that is why. Volunteer mornings are a low-commitment way to spend a Saturday and learn which trees on your regular walk have a lineage.

A late-summer weekend that uses the whole trail

If you have been in Collier Hills long enough to have a routine, this is a template that borrows more of what is already here.

Saturday morning. Walk in from Walthall by 7:45 for the 5K, or, on any other Saturday, start with a coffee and take the trail north under Collier Road. The trail exits the shady canopy, runs beside Bobby Jones Golf Course, passes through a residential neighborhood, and reaches its northern trailhead at 1.3 miles. Turn around at Woodward Way in Atlanta Memorial Park, or push on to breakfast at Boone's.

Saturday midday. If you play tennis, book a clay court at Bitsy Grant. It is the largest public tennis facility in Atlanta and the only one with public clay courts, and the drive is shorter than the walk from most of the neighborhood.

Sunday. Go south instead of north. The stretch between the trestle and Ardmore Park is the quietest part of the Northside Trail on a weekend morning. It is also the part with the most Civil War markers per hundred yards, which is a specific and slightly odd thing to know about your own neighborhood.

Once a season. Sign up for a Trees Atlanta workday in the park. The Arboretum's care schedule is where the volunteer opportunities live, and the two hours pay back later in the year when you can point out a young Ponce de Leon magnolia to a houseguest.

Why any of this matters for a homeowner

Every Collier Hills listing description mentions the BeltLine and Tanyard Creek Park. The paragraph writes itself. What separates the residents who actually use those amenities from the ones who drive past them is a rough mental map of what connects to what, and which access point is the right one for a given errand. The 5K morning gives you that map in under an hour. The rest of the year, one late-summer weekend spent walking the full mile in each direction does the same thing.

If you are thinking about buying or selling in Collier Hills, or comparing it to nearby enclaves like Ardmore Park, Haynes Manor, or Peachtree Hills, the way a home sits relative to those trailheads is not a footnote. It is the reason the neighborhood feels the way it does. Mary Stuart Iverson has walked this trail in every direction. When you are ready to talk through what a specific block on Walthall or Overbrook or Colland actually lives like on a Saturday morning, schedule a free consultation.