The River Trail Through the Pocket Ends at a Fence, and the State Just Approved Two More

"This is a big issue for Sacramento."

That was Mayor Kevin McCarty's reaction after the Central Valley Flood Protection Board voted in late August to approve two more private fences across the levee that runs through the Pocket and Greenhaven neighborhoods. If you walk or bike the river trail here, you already know the fences he's talking about. You've probably turned around at one.

Most people who live along the bend call it "the trail" like it's a finished thing, because on either end, it is. Head north from Garcia Bend Park and the pavement runs clean along the water. Head south and it connects into Freeport. It's the middle four miles, cutting straight through the neighborhoods that gave the Pocket its name, where the trail disappears into a patchwork of private levee-top parcels, some fenced, some not, none of it public.

That gap isn't a construction delay waiting on a contractor. It's a property fight that just got harder to settle, and it's worth understanding if you've ever wondered why your evening walk detours onto Pocket Road instead of staying on the water the whole way.

What's Actually Finished, and Why It Matters

The trail's bookends have gotten real investment lately. A $23 million bridge over Interstate 5, the Del Rio Trail Bridge, opened in December 2025 and completed a 4.8-mile rail-to-trail route that now feeds directly into the river parkway. On the Garcia Bend side, the paved trail itself is well built out: a 2.5-mile stretch that hugs the river for a 5-mile round trip, with LifeTrail fitness stations designed for seniors and people with disabilities, four gender-neutral restrooms, and a boat launch that runs 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. with day and annual pass options.

So the neighborhood isn't short on finished trail. It's short on the piece that would make all those finished pieces one continuous route instead of two separate ones.

How long that missing piece actually is depends on which endpoints you measure between. Recent reporting on the fence dispute describes a four-mile gap. Older trail guides describe a narrower break, closer to two miles, between roughly Clipper Way and Garcia Bend Park. Both can be true at once. As more of the trail gets built around the edges, the unfinished middle looks longer relative to what's already open, even if the raw property fight hasn't moved.

The Fences the State Just Approved

Here's the part that's actually new. The property owners who applied for the fences argue they protect private land and discourage trespassing. One owner told a local news station she believes restricting access with a fence actually helps protect the levee itself.

The Sacramento River Parkway Coalition sees it differently, and their objection is about engineering, not access. Their argument is that fences crossing the levee can trap floating debris during high water, redirecting currents against the bank and accelerating the erosion the levee is supposed to prevent. Flood engineers who reviewed the specific fences just approved say they won't affect structural strength, and parts of them can be removed if water levels rise. That's the compromise the board landed on. It's also exactly the kind of compromise that keeps the trail broken in the same place it's been broken for years.

Mayor McCarty asked the flood board not to approve additional fencing before the vote. The board approved it anyway. The city is now willing to consider eminent domain to acquire the land needed to finish the route, and city leaders are expected to take up that discussion this month.

The Other Crews Working the Same Levee

If you've noticed heavy equipment on the levee over the past few years, that's a separate project, and it's bigger than the trail fight. The Army Corps of Engineers is roughly six years into a $1.8 billion levee modernization effort running from 2020 through 2027, installing underground cutoff walls and bank erosion protection through both Little Pocket and Big Pocket. Some of the same cross-levee fences now at the center of the dispute were actually removed during this construction for safety, then reapplied for afterward once the work moved through.

That overlap is part of why the trail situation feels tangled from the outside. Two different agencies are working the same stretch of levee for two different reasons, on two different timelines, and the fence question sits at the intersection of both.

What It Would Actually Take to Finish

A city appraisal found that completing the parkway requires acquiring public access easements across 38 private properties. That's the real scope of the remaining work, not a single gap to pave but three dozen separate negotiations, some of which now include newly approved fencing to work around.

The payoff, if it happens, is bigger than a neighborhood amenity. A completed Sacramento River Parkway would link with the American River Parkway for more than 40 miles of connected off-road path between Freeport and Folsom Lake, and it's envisioned as a piece of the larger Great California Delta Trail, a route meant to eventually reach toward the Bay Area. The Pocket's four missing miles are the one piece standing between the neighborhood and that whole network.

The Walk You Can Actually Take This Weekend

None of this means there's nothing to do on the river right now. Garcia Bend Park at 7654 Pocket Road is still the neighborhood's anchor for it. Beyond the paved trail, there's an off-leash area for dogs, a fish cleaning station for anyone who's had luck off the shoreline or the boat ramp, and sandy patches along the bank where people wade in on hot afternoons. Evenings bring owls and bats out along the tree line, which is reason enough to time a walk for dusk instead of noon.

If you're making an evening of it, the food options nearby have actually gotten better this year. Dumpling Yo! has built a following for scratch-made soup dumplings and earned a spot on Yelp's local Top 50 list. Hop Junction pairs a serious beer list with fusion bar food. Cacio does Italian with a wine list deep enough to spend a whole dinner working through. Ramen House Tenjin draws a line on weekends for a reason. And if you're after something colder, NuYo Frozen Yogurt expanded into the Pocket earlier this year, joining the small cluster of newer spots along the neighborhood's shopping strips.

For a piece of the neighborhood's older history, The Trap on Riverside Boulevard has been serving the community since the late 1800s, first as a saloon and grocery store, through Prohibition and past it. It's the kind of place that makes the newer openings feel like part of a longer story rather than a trend.

Why This Is Worth Watching

The trail through the Pocket is simultaneously getting better and getting harder to finish, and both things are true for reasons that have nothing to do with each other. The bridges and paved segments keep expanding because those projects have clear funding and willing sellers. The four miles in the middle stay stuck because finishing them means untangling 38 separate property questions, one flood board that just sided with private landowners over public access, and a mayor now willing to talk about eminent domain to break the standoff.

If you live here, that's worth knowing not because it changes your evening walk today, but because the city's next move, expected this month, could be the first real sign of whether this gets resolved in years or stays exactly as it is.

Angela Heinzer has spent 36 years working the neighborhoods along this stretch of the river, from Greenhaven to South Land Park, and knows which streets get you closest to the water and which listings back right up to the levee. If you're curious what a home in this corner of the Pocket is actually worth, or just want a neighbor's read on where things stand, Angela Heinzer is a phone call away.