Albemarle County's own description of Biscuit Run Park names three roads as its boundary: Interstate 64, Avon Street, and Old Lynchburg Road. That last one is the road Whittington sits on, the 183-acre community of roughly 100 homes on wooded one-acre lots just south of Mosby Mountain. On paper, the county's largest park, at 1,190 acres, shares an address line with the neighborhood.
In practice, the only way in still isn't from that side. Since the park opened to the public on December 14, 2024, its single entrance has sat off Route 20, Scottsville Road, on the opposite edge of the property. If you live along Old Lynchburg Road, the park you can see from certain vantage points is not yet the park you can walk into.
What's Actually Open, If You Drive to Route 20
The Route 20 entrance at 2020 Scottsville Road has been the front door for close to two years now. It includes a 75-space parking lot, restrooms, and access to 8.5 miles of signed, maintained multi-use trails. Mountain bikers have their own dedicated corner of the park in Biscuits + Gravity, a downhill and skills area built in partnership with the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club, with the county reporting that most of its trails and jump lines are complete and open for riders working from beginner through advanced.
Two projects are still catching up to that headline entrance, and both matter for anyone planning a fall visit:
- Three boardwalks crossing the marshier stretches of the Biscuit Run stream valley, part of a trail extension that started construction in 2025 and is targeted for completion sometime in 2026
- Two irrigated natural grass athletic fields near the Route 20 entrance, which broke ground in February 2026 and are tentatively scheduled for substantial completion this fall
Neither is finished as of this writing, so anyone heading over should expect a construction zone tucked somewhere in the loop, not a finished park.
The Construction Happening on the Other Side
The bigger 2026 news isn't at Route 20 at all. On March 2, crews broke ground on a 220-foot pedestrian bridge that will connect Biscuit Run Park to residential areas off Fifth Street, including the Southwood community. Albemarle County describes it as ADA-compliant, and county project manager Audrey Storm framed the goal plainly: giving people who use wheelchairs the same access to the park as more agile visitors, regardless of which neighborhood they live in. The bridge is expected to open the following spring.
That bridge pairs with a second public entrance off Hickory Street, where construction also began in February 2026. The county's current materials place this entrance in the park's northern portion; earlier planning documents had described the same general area as the property's west side. Southwood sits along that same Old Lynchburg Road corridor, just a good deal closer to town than Whittington is. The new door opening on the west side of the park in the next year serves the stretch of that road near Southwood and Fifth Street, not the stretch further south past Mosby Mountain.
Here is how the two access points actually compare right now:
| Entrance | Status as of August 2026 | Who it serves |
|---|---|---|
| Route 20 / Scottsville Road | Open since December 2024; 75 parking spaces, 8.5 miles of trails, boardwalks and athletic fields still under construction | The eastern approach, off Route 20 |
| Hickory Street + pedestrian bridge | Construction underway since February and March 2026; opening targeted for spring 2027 | The Fifth Street and Southwood corridor |
What Old Lynchburg Road Still Doesn't Have
This is the part that's easy to miss if you're only skimming the park's boundary description. At the March 2026 groundbreaking, Jim Barbour of Albemarle Parks and Recreation named Old Lynchburg Road alongside Route 20 and the Wegmans and Fifth Street Station side as the corridors that matter for getting people into the park. That's a fair list of the roads that touch the property. It isn't the same as saying all three already have a working door.
The Piedmont Environmental Council has separately described the stream crossing on the park's western side, the stretch nearest Southwood, as deeply channeled and badly eroded, difficult for anyone on foot or bike to cross safely without a built bridge. That's the specific gap the new pedestrian bridge is designed to close, and it explains why that fix landed near Southwood first. It says nothing about the much longer run of Old Lynchburg Road further south, past Mosby Mountain, where Whittington sits. No project in the county's current plans puts a trailhead there.
None of this is a knock on the neighborhood's location. It's a useful correction to an assumption a map alone might suggest. Sharing a boundary line with a park is not the same as sharing a trailhead with one, and for the Whittington stretch of Old Lynchburg Road, that distinction still holds this year.
The Practical Loop for This Fall
For now, reaching Biscuit Run Park from Whittington means driving around to the Route 20 side, the only entrance that's actually open. Once there, the 8.5 miles of signed trails and the Biscuits + Gravity bike area are ready to use today. The boardwalk sections and the new athletic fields are worth checking on before a visit, since both are active construction zones that could still be closed off depending on the week.
If the athletic fields do wrap up on schedule this fall, that adds two new fields to the loop, useful for anyone weighing a Saturday morning at the park against a drive somewhere farther. The bridge and Hickory Street entrance, meanwhile, are a spring 2027 story for the other side of the park, not something that changes the drive from Whittington this year.
The honest read on 2026 is this: Biscuit Run Park is getting bigger and more finished by the month, and Whittington genuinely borders it. But the new doors under construction this year are aimed at the Fifth Street and Southwood stretch of that same boundary, well north of Mosby Mountain. Worth the drive to Route 20 in the meantime. Not yet worth expecting a shortcut through the trees.
If you're weighing a move to this part of Albemarle County and want a clearer read on what a specific address actually offers, from park access to the practical details that don't show up on a map, the Bobby and Alex Schwartz Team is glad to walk through it with you.
