For a couple of summers, anyone riding Panther Creek Greenway east out of Cameron Pond hit the same dead end. Orange fencing, a gravel apron, and a sign pointing riders back toward Cameron Pond Drive. The gap sat exactly where the trail needed to duck under I-540 to keep going toward Cary Park and the rest of northwest Cary. That gap is closed now. Two segments of concrete boardwalk, roughly 870 linear feet in total, carry the greenway under the highway with full grade separation. No crossing signal, no waiting for a break in traffic, just a paved path that keeps moving.
The crew that built it, Bridge Builders working with PermaTrak, used precast concrete deck panels set on a timber piling substructure, installed top-down rather than from the ground up. That construction method mattered because it let the boardwalk go in without disturbing the wetland underneath, which is also why the gap took as long as it did to close. The trail on both sides of I-540 had been finished for years. The middle piece was the hard part.
What that means for anyone living in Cameron Pond right now: the greenway most people still describe as a set of disconnected neighborhood loops is, as of this year, one continuous route. Town of Cary's own greenway page for Panther Creek lays out the full run: starting at Cary Park Lake, under Green Level Church Road through a pedestrian culvert, across the new I-540 boardwalk, through Cameron Pond, into the Neighborhood Park at Carpenter Fire Station Road, and east to Billings Drive, where it ends at the Northwest Cary YMCA.
The trail's reputation hasn't caught up to the construction. A Cary outdoors writer covering the town's greenway system in June still described the Panther Creek extension as so recent that the town's own website hadn't been updated to reflect it, calling it out specifically for still lagging behind what had already been built on the ground.
The Land Cameron Pond Already Gave Up
The park sitting at the trail's midpoint didn't appear out of nowhere. The Neighborhood Park at Carpenter Fire Station Road covers 20.8 acres at the corner of Carpenter Fire Station Road and Highcroft Drive, and about 16.8 of those acres came from a dedication tied to the Cameron Pond subdivision's own rezoning approval. The Town purchased four more residential parcels fronting Carpenter Fire Station Road to round out the site. In practice, the land underneath the park and this stretch of greenway has belonged to the public since Cameron Pond itself was rezoned and platted. It just sat there, undeveloped, waiting for the rest of the trail network to reach it.
That's a different story than a town simply deciding to add an amenity nearby. The park exists because Cameron Pond's development agreement put it there. The greenway connection through it just took longer to build than the neighborhood around it did.
A Signal at the Intersection That Splits the Neighborhood in Two
Cameron Pond Drive and Highcroft Drive is the same intersection that divides the neighborhood into its two distinct build eras, the earlier Manors section and the later Shires section, a split covered in an earlier post on this site. That intersection is getting a new traffic signal with pedestrian push buttons, installed as part of the Carpenter Fire Station Road widening project now underway between Cameron Pond Drive and NC-55.
The widening itself turns that stretch into a four-lane, median-divided road with a 10-foot street-side trail on the south side and a 5-foot sidewalk on the north, according to the Town's project page. The pedestrian signal is being added at Cameron Pond Drive and Highcroft specifically to help people cross safely between the two halves of the neighborhood so they can reach the park, the greenway, and the YMCA now sitting just past the road that divides them. The same crossing that quietly separates Cameron Pond's older and newer sections is becoming the literal connector between the neighborhood and the trail network built around it.
What the Extra Half Mile Actually Gets You
The destination end of this route is a full recreation facility, not just a longer walk. Northwest Cary YMCA, located on Carpenter Fire Station Road, lists group fitness classes, an indoor track, strength and cardio equipment, a gymnasium, an outdoor pool, a sauna, and drop-in child care on its own program page. None of that requires a car if you're starting from inside Cameron Pond. The greenway gets you to the door.
Along the way, the Neighborhood Park adds its own reason to stop rather than just pass through. The same local writeup that flagged the town's outdated website also pointed out a misting station at the park, useful on the stretch of trail that runs open and exposed through wetland before it ducks back into tree cover. Restrooms are available at both the Neighborhood Park and Mills Park, per the Town's own greenway listing. AllTrails documents a 3.1-mile paved out-and-back segment specifically between Mills Park and the Neighborhood Park on Carpenter Fire Station Road, rated an easy route with a modest elevation gain, open year-round, leashed dogs welcome. That's the middle section most people walking or biking from Cameron Pond will actually use on a given evening, distinct from the longer haul east to the Y or west back toward Cary Park Lake.
The Piece That Was Always Going to Take Longest
None of this required new land acquisition or a new park to be planned. The park was funded and dedicated years ago. The road project connecting it to Cameron Pond has been on the books since the neighborhood's own rezoning. The only thing that had to happen was a boardwalk under a highway, which is the kind of infrastructure that takes longer to build than anything around it.
For Cameron Pond, that means a walk or ride that used to end at a fence now ends at a YMCA, with a park, a signal, and a stretch of shaded boardwalk in between. Nothing about the neighborhood changed. The last unbuilt piece of what was always planned around it finally did.
If you're weighing what proximity to this kind of finished connection is worth for a home near Cameron Pond's east side, right along Carpenter Fire Station Road, Living in Cary tracks changes like this one street by street. Reach out for a neighborhood consultation and we'll walk you through what's actually on the ground, not just what's on the map.
