The Nickel Plate Trail Used To Dead-End At 96th Street. Not Anymore.

For years, Fishers residents who hopped on the Nickel Plate Trail near their own neighborhood ran into the same wall eventually. Not a literal wall. Just 96th Street, a crossing busy enough that most walkers, runners and cyclists took one look and turned around rather than risk it. Tracy Mundell, who lives near the trail, put it plainly to a WRTV reporter this year: "We would turn around and just go back the other way." Her husband agreed. For a long stretch of the trail's life, that was the whole story. A nice path that mostly looped you back to where you started.

That changed on February 27, 2026, when Fishers and Indianapolis officials cut the ribbon on a new pedestrian bridge over 96th Street. It sounds like a small piece of infrastructure. It functioned like the missing link in a chain that had been building for a decade.

What the bridge actually fixed

The bridge itself was part of a 1.3-mile trail extension that closed the gap between 96th and 106th streets, built by the city of Fishers in two phases with the help of a $4.5 million grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness summed up the safety issue directly at the ribbon-cutting: "No pedestrian wants to try to cross 96th Street." With the bridge in place, that crossing stopped being a decision point.

The math is worth sitting with. Before this year, the Nickel Plate Trail existed as separate, functional segments: a stretch through Fishers up into Noblesville, and a stretch through Indianapolis running from the State Fairgrounds northeast to the county line. They sat close enough to see each other and far enough apart that almost nobody bothered making the connection on foot or by bike. Now the combined trail runs 16.82 miles from Noblesville through Fishers into Indianapolis, reaching all the way to the State Fairgrounds where it meets the Monon Trail. Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett framed it as a three-city deal, not a two-city one, noting the bridge "represents connectivity with Noblesville, with Westfield" as much as with Fishers and Indianapolis.

That is the claim worth sitting with if you have lived here a while and always thought of the trail as a neighborhood amenity rather than a way to actually get somewhere. It was never really both until this spring.

The part that isn't finished yet

Here's the honest caveat. The trail still has a gap between 75th and 82nd streets in Indianapolis, closed while the Indiana Department of Transportation rebuilds the I-465 and I-69 interchange as part of its Clear Path project. INDOT has that segment slated for completion by the end of 2026. Once it opens, the Nickel Plate Trail will stretch more than 19 miles across Marion and Hamilton counties and tie into a roughly 41-mile loop with the Monon and Midland Trace trails.

So this fall is a transition season, not a finished product. The 96th Street bridge solved the crossing that stopped most Fishers residents cold. The interstate gap further south is the next piece, and it is close enough to see the finish line without being there yet.

The next three weeks on the trail

The Nickel Plate District Amphitheater sits at the center of the trail's Fishers stretch, and its fall calendar gives residents a real reason to plan a trail outing rather than just a lap around the block. The 14th annual Fishers Blues Fest just wrapped over Labor Day weekend, drawing crowds to the Amphitheater for free performances both nights. That is the kind of turnout that tells you the corridor works as a destination, not just a pass-through.

Here's what is still ahead this month:

The 21-and-older Glow in the Park ticket comes with a reusable Silipint cup that knocks $2 off every beer from Mashcraft Brewing, a small detail that tells you Fishers Parks has run this event enough years to know what its regulars actually want.

The stops that make the ride worth it

None of this matters much if the trail is just infrastructure. What makes it worth using regularly is what sits along it. The Fishers Farmers Market sets up at the Amphitheater every Saturday morning during the season, with local vendors selling produce, meats, baked goods and flowers on a paved footprint that is easy to navigate with a stroller or a bike.

Keep heading through downtown and Handel's and Rita's sit close enough together that the only real decision is ice cream or Italian ice. Angelo's Italian Market is smaller and family-run, the kind of place that makes fresh pasta in house and sends you home with something to bake for dinner. For a sit-down stop, Four Day Ray Brewing has a rooftop patio and a full food menu, Cooper & Cow leans toward a more elevated steakhouse dinner, and Parks Place Pub covers the casual end with drinks and a lively downtown crowd.

Near 106th Street, Hub & Spoke's outdoor plaza has a communal fire pit, open lawn and swings, plus access to the Maker Playground, a 15,000-square-foot makerspace with a woodshop, metal shop, CNC machine and 3D printer open to anyone 16 and up. If you have never taken the trail through the 116th Street tunnel, look for the mural painted by artist Becky Hochhalter, which hides 15 butterflies among its local landmarks. It is the kind of detail you only notice once you are actually walking the corridor rather than driving past it.

What's new along the corridor this year

The businesses opening near the trail this year add another layer to the case that this stretch of Fishers is filling in, not just connecting. Jeff's Bagel Run is bringing its first Indiana location to Allisonville Road just north of 116th Street, with scratch-made bagels proofed overnight and baked fresh throughout the day, no shortcuts and no freezers according to the chain. Vicious Biscuit made its own Indiana debut earlier this year with Southern-style, over-the-top biscuit sandwiches. Downtown, the Cake Pantry has signed a lease for a storefront, adding one more reason to build a stop into a trail walk rather than treat the trail as the whole outing.

None of these openings happened because of the bridge specifically. They happened because downtown Fishers keeps drawing new tenants regardless. But a trail that finally goes somewhere makes every one of these stops easier to string together into an actual afternoon instead of a series of separate car trips.

What this means for how you actually use the trail this fall

If you have lived in Fishers for a few years and mentally filed the Nickel Plate Trail as a nice loop near your house, this is the season to reconsider that. The crossing that used to end most people's trail use at 96th Street is gone. The events calendar at the Amphitheater is dense enough that you can build a weekend around it without leaving the corridor. And the stretch of businesses between the farmers market and Hub & Spoke gives you enough reason to park the car once and walk the rest.

The gap further south in Indianapolis means the full 19-mile version of this trail is not quite here yet. But the piece that mattered most to actual daily use, the piece that kept residents turning around instead of crossing, opened back in February. This fall is the first real test of whether people treat it that way.

We think about this kind of local shift the same way we think about a home's location within Fishers. A trail connection like this does not show up on a listing sheet, but it changes how a neighborhood actually lives day to day, and that is exactly the kind of detail our family pays attention to when we help yours find the right place here.

If you are weighing a move in Fishers or anywhere else in the northern Indianapolis suburbs and want a team that knows these details street by street, Shelly Walters Realty Group is ready to help. Let our family help your family. Contact us today.