Walk the Jean Teague Greenway from the Sheffield Drive entrance on a Saturday morning and you will pass the lighted pickleball courts before most players have shown up, cross the bridge toward the ball fields, and eventually reach the quiet stone marker that reads simply "Remember," a memorial to Holocaust victims and the servicemen who liberated the camps. Kids cut across the grass toward the playground. A few dog walkers nod without breaking stride. It feels like the kind of trail that has always been exactly this size and shape.
It hasn't. And depending on which map you pull up before you leave the house, you will get three different answers about how big it actually is.
Three Trail Lengths, One Loop
The City of Knoxville's park page for West Hills/John Bynon Park describes a 1.9-mile paved greenway running through the property. Visit Knoxville's own greenway guide lists the Jean Teague Greenway at 2.3 miles, measuring it as a linear route rather than a loop. AllTrails logs a full loop of 2.5 miles with 85 feet of elevation gain, closer to an hour's walk than the "5-minute ride" mountain biking sites clock for the paved spine alone.
None of these numbers is wrong. They're measuring different things. The paved spine that the city maintains and the linear stretch that Visit Knoxville describes both end at the same points: West Hills Elementary near Vanosdale Road on one side, Gallaher View Road on the other, where the route forks toward Cavet Station Greenway and Ten Mile Creek Greenway. The loop that AllTrails clocks at 2.5 miles gets there by using neighborhood sidewalks and a side path that isn't part of the official greenway system at all. One reviewer described stumbling onto signs for something called the Scott Cleland Trail mid-walk and finding "lovely, easy, little wander through the woods that was very peaceful," a spur most people discover by accident rather than by reading a trail map.
The greenway's name reflects another part of its history.
A Name on the Trail, Not on the Ribbon-Cutting
The greenway carries the name of Jean Teague, who served on Knoxville's City Council for 28 years, from 1972 to 2001, and was instrumental in bringing the 1982 World's Fair to the city. She also sat on the Metropolitan Planning Commission and served as Vice Mayor. The city named the greenway for her in 2010, nearly a decade after she left office, a fitting honor for someone who spent almost three decades shaping how Knoxville's public spaces got built.
The newest trail running through the same park is the West Hills Dogwood Trail.
The West Hills Dogwood Trail
As WATE reported, Dogwood Arts added its first new Dogwood Trail to the citywide program in more than 20 years in 2022, and it went through West Hills. The West Hills Community Association had been asking for the designation since 2016. During the pandemic, volunteers canvassed the neighborhood door to door, leaving flyers and talking to homeowners one at a time, because Dogwood Arts requires that more than 80 percent of residents along a proposed route support it before the trail can be approved.
WATE quoted Lee Hume, president of the West Hills Community Association: "The result was an astounding 97.5% positive response rate."
The trail that came out of that effort covers more than eight miles of blooming dogwoods and azaleas through a neighborhood that has been growing them since the 1950s, when developer Morgan Schubert assembled the Walker, Kirby, Hickey, and Van Osdale farms into what became West Hills, the city's first major post-World War II subdivision built primarily around modern ranch-style houses. The 1954 Parade of Homes featured new construction on Stockton Drive, and many of those original owners were the ones planting the dogwoods that qualified the neighborhood for the trail seven decades later.
The grand-opening celebration happened at West Hills/John Bynon Park, the same park the Jean Teague Greenway runs through, with a ribbon cutting, food trucks from neighborhood-owned businesses, and activities for kids. The trail opened six years after the first request, following work by a garden club, a beautification committee, and neighborhood volunteers.
Planned Greenway Extension
Compare that to what's actually on the books for extending the paved greenway itself. Knoxville's 2040 Mobility Plan lists a project called Corridor A, a new shared-use path that would extend the Jean Teague Greenway to connect with Weisgarber Greenway. The plan's project list budgets it at $2,210,000 and sets a window running from 2022 to 2041.
The two efforts differ in scope: one created a neighborhood Dogwood Trail, and the other is a planned greenway connection.
The Dogwood Trail involved the Community Association, garden club, and volunteers; Corridor A is included in the city's Mobility Plan.
Community Activities and Local Businesses This Summer
The Community Association publishes a bi-monthly newsletter that goes out to roughly 1,400 homes, with recent issues covering neighbor interviews, the garden club, and updates on the Dogwood Trail itself. The group hosted Conversation with the Candidates events on July 14 at the Church of the Nazarene on Vanosdale Road and again on August 4 near West Hills Elementary, open to the whole neighborhood and moderated by Hume.
On the food side, Coffee & Chocolate, one of Knoxville's longest-running coffee shops, opened its third location on Kingston Pike in West Hills, close enough to the Winston Road entrance to work as a real before-or-after stop on a greenway walk. It joined a stretch of Kingston Pike that already includes Gourmet's Market and a mix of longtime local eateries, the kind of commercial edge that grew up around the neighborhood without displacing its residential core.
And the trail itself stays quiet by comparison to Knoxville's bigger draws. Trail-tracking data shows only a couple hundred logged rides and check-ins total, a fraction of the traffic on more heavily marketed greenways elsewhere in the city. For a neighborhood trail that connects an elementary school, a YMCA, and a sidewalk link to Bearden High School along Gallaher View Road, that's less an oversight than a sign it was built for the people who live here, not for outside traffic.
The Real Measurement
So which number is right, 1.9 miles, 2.3, or 2.5? Each figure describes a different route: the paved spine, the linear route, or a loop that includes neighborhood sidewalks and paths. The Dogwood Trail was developed through neighborhood efforts, while Corridor A appears in the Mobility Plan with a 2022-to-2041 project window. The Community Association's newsletter shares updates about neighborhood activities.
Terri Lawson keeps a close eye on what's changing in West Hills and across East Tennessee, from the neighborhood associations doing the quiet work to the bigger projects still years out. If you ever want to talk about what's happening on your street or in the one you're watching from a distance, Let's Connect.
