The Jonesboro Greenway Trail System covers roughly 18 miles of paved and natural-surface paths across the city, and the longest and most satisfying stretch of it runs straight through Craighead Forest Park on the south side of town. It is not glamorous. It is, however, genuinely good.
First reason to go: the sheer variety packed into a short distance. Within a single two-mile loop near the forest park, you pass open meadow, pine canopy, creek crossings, and lake views—which sounds like a brochure but is just what the terrain actually does. The park sits on about 660 acres of old Civilian Conservation Corps land, and the trees are mature enough that even a July morning feels ten degrees cooler once you’re under them. That matters in northeast Arkansas.
Second reason: it works for almost any mode of slow human movement. Walkers use it. Runners use it. People on fat-tire bikes and the occasional rollerblader use it. Dog walkers are plentiful to the point of being a minor traffic consideration on weekend mornings. The paved greenway sections connect to neighborhood streets and, eventually, to other parts of the city trail network, so if you want to start near Arkansas State University and end up at the park, that’s a real option—about four miles each way depending on your route.
Third reason, and this one is underrated: the trail network costs nothing to use and has decent parking at multiple forest park entry points off Harrisburg Road and Matthew Drive. No membership, no app, no fee. Bring water because the fountains aren’t always reliable, and the trail signage is adequate without being foolproof, so a quick look at the city’s greenway map online before your first visit saves some mild confusion at intersections.
The natural-surface trails inside the forest park itself—the ones that cut away from the paved greenway and wind closer to the lake—are looser and muddier after rain, which is either a flaw or a feature depending on who you ask. Mountain bikers tend to prefer those conditions. People wearing clean shoes do not. Worth knowing before you commit to the dirt.
If you go on a weekday morning, you’ll have long stretches nearly to yourself. Saturday between 8 and 10 a.m. is peak hour—it gets social fast, in a low-key neighborhood way, not a crowded state-park way. The dog park sits adjacent to one of the main trailheads, which adds ambient noise but also a certain chaotic energy that some people find cheerful and others find annoying. You can route around it.
The trail system doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is: a functional, well-maintained network of paths through some of the better green space Jonesboro has to offer. It’s not going to make a bucket list. It will, however, make a Tuesday morning considerably better than it had any right to be, which is most of what a city trail system needs to accomplish.
