The Fifeville Community Trail – The Piedmont Environmental Council

Trail adopters needed!
It’s a nice place because neighbors take care of it and we need your help!
Contact [email protected], or call 434-465-9869.

Nestled in an urban forest, the Fifeville Community Trail makes it possible for neighborhood residents to travel safely to Cherry Avenue, Tonsler Park and into the heart of Charlottesville without the company of fast-moving traffic.

aerial showing a wooded trail — Fifeville Community Trail. *Photo by Hugh Kenny/PEC*.
Photos from the January work party. Photos of the new Community Story Walk

The Fifeville Neighborhood Association created the Fifeville Community Trail in 2022, with support from numerous organizations, including The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), the Rivanna Trails Foundation (RTF), the City of Charlottesville and Woodard Properties, which owns the land. The x-shaped trail connects Greenstone on Fifth (an income-qualified housing development) to Tonsler Park and Fifth Street to the Cherry Avenue corridor via 7 1/2 Street.

Fifeville Neighborhood Association has worked closely with community partners including Abundant Life Ministries, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia, the Islamic Society of Central Virginia, Wildrock, and many others.

The team that created the Fifeville Community Trail describes the project’s history and process in this 25-minute panel discussion.

Funding for the trail began with a grant from the Heal Charlottesville Fund of the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation. RTF and PEC co-wrote a successful $25,000 Get Outdoors grant from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation for construction, lights, signage and more.

The stream-side trail recreates a historic connection that was severed during Urban Renewal during the second half of the 20th century. It provides an important cross-neighborhood connection and a quiet, natural space in an area with insufficient sidewalks and open space.

New Signs Show Fifeville’s Changing Landscape

Photo by Peter Krebs. View full images of the signs here.

Evidence of ways the landscape has changed is visible along the Fifeville Community Trail, and some of its stories are highlighted by two new interpretative signs that PEC produced with support from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. These signs combine our community partners’ careful archival research with resident interviews in a beautiful, easily understood format.

One of the signs reveals that what is now a green oasis was once an industrial operation (a brick manufacture). The other shows how Fifth Street was relocated and enlarged during Urban Renewal. That led to both an expanded park and the loss of several homes. This happened during the lifetime of many area residents and we believe it important that stories like these be memorialized.