For years, the Saturday morning routine in Atwater Village has had a built-in flaw. You cross the Red Car Bridge, pick up the river path heading north past Sunnynook River Park, and eventually you hit a wall of options that all involve doubling back the way you came. Griffith Park sits right there across the water, close enough to see the tree line, but the connection has always felt improvised: a muddy shortcut, a chain-link gap, a moment where you're not sure if you're allowed to be where you are. So you turn around. The walk becomes an out-and-back instead of a loop, and a loop is what makes a route worth repeating.

That changed sometime around the middle of 2025, and most people who live here still don't seem to know it.

Where the Old Route Actually Dead-Ended

The gap wasn't imaginary. For years, the connection between the river bike path and the Griffith Park Recreation Center existed only as what one transportation reporter covering the build-out described as a decades-old access point that was unpaved, muddy, rutted, and genuinely hard to find. It sat at the edge of Griffith Park's southeast tail, just south of Los Feliz Boulevard and east of Riverside Drive, close to the park's main entrance but disconnected from it in any way a casual rider would trust.

That's the part worth sitting with. This wasn't a case of the infrastructure not existing. It existed. It just wasn't built for anyone who didn't already know exactly where to step.

The New Piece, and What It Actually Closes

Construction on a proper connector wrapped up in the middle of 2025: a paved, roughly 750-foot walk-and-bike path that ties directly into two footbridges that were already there, one crossing the 5 Freeway, one crossing the river itself. The path is U-shaped, running from a parking lot at the Recreation Center out to the end of the freeway footbridge, and it finally formalizes what had been an unofficial river access point for years.

Here's what that means in practice. Someone starting from Red River Park, at the east end of the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge, can now ride north along the bike path, pass Sunnynook River Park, cross into Los Feliz using the Sunnynook Footbridge, and come back around through Griffith Park's Recreation Center using this new connector instead of retracing the same half mile of pavement. It's a loop now, not a there-and-back.

One caveat, and it's a fair one: the path is currently signed as "Walking Trail Only" in places, with no markers indicating that it's how you actually get down to the river, and the reporter who covered its completion noted that another 100 to 150 feet of pavement could have tied it directly into Riverside Drive's protected bike lane instead of ending at a parking lot. It's a genuine improvement, not a finished, obvious one. You'll still want to know where you're going the first time.

The Loop, Point to Point

For anyone who wants to try it this weekend, the route looks roughly like this:

1. Start at Red River Park, the small green space at the east end of the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge, where the old Pacific Electric Railway line once crossed the median of Glendale Boulevard.
2. Cross the Red Car Bridge, a 430-foot pedestrian and cycling span built in 2020 using five concrete piers that used to hold up the tracks for the Glendale-Burbank line. It cost about $4 million and it's the reason those old rail piers are still standing at all.
3. Pick up the L.A. River bike path heading north, passing under the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge itself, a 13-arch structure designed by Merrill Butler back in 1927.
4. Continue past Sunnynook River Park, where the restored native plantings along the bank are worth the thirty seconds it takes to notice them.
5. Cross into Los Feliz via the Sunnynook Footbridge, walking your bike, since the span is narrow.
6. Loop back south through the new Griffith Park Recreation Center connector path, which now ties the freeway and river footbridges directly to the Rec Center's parking lot instead of leaving you to guess.
7. Return to Atwater Village the way you came in, or continue on to Riverside Drive if you're comfortable navigating the last stretch without a formal bike lane.

None of this requires a car, a permit, or a plan beyond knowing the sequence exists.

The Other Way to Close the Loop

If you'd rather go north instead of into Los Feliz, there's a second, more dramatic option: the North Atwater Bridge, a 325-foot cable-stayed span with a 125-foot mast and steel suspension cables that connects Atwater's east bank directly to the river bike path and, from there, to the wider Griffith Park trail network. It's built with two separate 12-foot-wide paths side by side: one with a hardwood deck and stainless mesh railings for pedestrians and cyclists, the other topped with horse-friendly rubber pavers and a solid picket railing for equestrians, since this stretch of the river genuinely does see riders on horseback and not just as a novelty.

The North Atwater route is longer and less subtle than the new connector to the south. It's also the more scenic of the two if you're doing this for the view of the mast against the hills rather than pure efficiency. Which bridge you use to close the loop mostly comes down to whether you want a quick Saturday circuit or a longer excuse to be outside.

Finishing at the Market

However you close the loop, Sunday morning gives you a natural reason to end it at Larga Avenue. The Atwater Village Farmers' Market has run every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. since it launched in June 2005, in public parking lot 646 at 3528 Larga Avenue, and it's built to be reached on foot or by bike from the river path rather than by car. More than two dozen Southern California producers set up there regularly, including organic growers like Givens, Sunrise, McFarlin, Fruit Fairy, and Kenter Canyon Farms, alongside hot food, live music, and a food scrap drop-off partnership with LA Compost.

It's also one of the few markets in the area that runs CalFresh dollars through the GusNIP and LA County ARP Market Match program, doubling EBT spending on produce up to $15 a week, and it accepts WIC and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program checks as well. If you're riding in, park your bike and walk in on foot. Larga Avenue functions as a dead end on market mornings, and the organizers ask visitors to leave the adjacent residential streets for neighbors rather than treating them as overflow parking.

Why This Is Worth Knowing Now

None of this is about property values or whether Atwater Village is a good place to buy. It's about the fact that a piece of public infrastructure finished quietly enough that a lot of longtime residents are still doing the old out-and-back version of a walk that doesn't need to be an out-and-back anymore. The gap that used to send people turning around at the water's edge has been paved over, signed imperfectly, and left waiting for people to actually use it.

If you've lived here long enough to have a fixed idea of where the river path ends, it's worth checking again this weekend. The route got longer in the best possible way: it got round.

Addora Beall has spent more than two decades working the streets on both sides of this river, from Atwater Village up through Glendale and into the foothill communities beyond, and pieces like this one come out of the same habit that makes her useful when a home in one of these neighborhoods actually goes on the market: paying attention to what's changed on the ground before anyone else writes it down. If you're weighing a move in or around Atwater Village, or just curious what a property near this loop might be worth in today's market, Addora Beall welcomes the conversation. Schedule a Personalized Consultation whenever you're ready.