What’s Open Now at Catawba Bend Preserve in York County
Drive out to Catawba Bend Parkway on a Saturday morning expecting to rent a mountain bike or walk onto a disc golf tee, and you'll find something quieter than advertised. There's a gravel lot, a small park store, a stand of loblolly pines around a pond, and a couple of miles of walking trail. No bike rental counter. No disc golf baskets yet. For now, visits center on walking and picnicking.
Catawba Bend Preserve and downtown Clover each have projects still in progress. If you're planning a fall weekend around what you've read about this county lately, it helps to know which parts of the story are finished and which parts are still being poured, stocked, or built.
York County opened Catawba Bend Preserve to the public on March 7, 2026, a 1,900-acre property on the east side of Rock Hill along the Catawba River. The county spent $6.3 million on phase one, and what that money bought is real and open now: 2.5 miles of trail, a grove of loblolly pines you can picnic under near a small body of water called Big Pond, a park store, parking, and restrooms. Park superintendent Marvin Bouknight was upfront about the scale of the first release when the gates opened, telling The Post and Courier it wasn't meant to be a big reveal, just an early look at what's here.
Everything else associated with the park, the part that made the announcement genuinely exciting, is phase two. More than 10 miles of mountain bike trail. An 18-hole disc golf course plus a 9-hole beginner course. Fishing ponds still being filled and stocked. A paved section of the Carolina Thread Trail, the regional network that eventually stretches over 1,600 miles across 15 counties in the Carolinas, with construction on that first mile having been slated to begin in the summer of 2026. As of this writing in September, the county's own listing for the preserve still describes those amenities as under construction, not completed. Six months after opening day, Catawba Bend is a hiking and picnicking spot, with additional outdoor recreation features planned in later phases.
That's not a knock on the park. It's genuinely a big deal for York County to add nearly 2,000 acres of protected river frontage, and the habitat alone (open fields, hardwood bottomland, wetland edges where deer, foxes, and the occasional bald eagle turn up) is worth the drive on its own. It just means timing your visit around what you actually want to do matters more than the press coverage suggested.
If you're deciding whether Catawba Bend belongs in this weekend's plans, here's the practical split as of early September:
Bring hiking shoes and a picnic blanket this month. Hold off on loading the bike rack or the tackle box until the county posts an update.
King of Fire Pizza's planned brick-and-mortar location is another project on Main Street in Clover. The Post and Courier reported in 2023 that the wood-fired pizza truck, run by three-time World Pizza Champion Siler Chapman, planned a permanent restaurant at 117 N. Main Street, in a building that dates to 1886.
Justin McFalls, the Clover resident and real estate investor who bought the building along with three others downtown, told The Post and Courier about his hopes when the plan was first announced. He said he wanted the town to be active at night and on weekends, pointing to how the old downtowns in Belmont and Rock Hill stay busy long after the workday ends. That was 2023. A roundup of new restaurants across the region published in January of this year still listed King of Fire's Clover location as opening, not open. If you've been waiting to grab a Hardy Pickle pizza on Main Street, the Clover location had not opened as of this writing.
None of this means downtown Clover isn't changing. McFalls buying up four aging buildings with plans to fill them is itself a sign the block is being taken seriously by someone willing to put money into it. Before planning a night out around it, check for an update.
While the preserve fills in and Main Street waits on its pizza oven, two long-running York County traditions are fully operational right now and worth the drive on their own.
The YoCo Brew Trail is a self-guided passport system that sends you through breweries across Rock Hill, Fort Mill, York, and Clover. Legal Remedy is the trail's original stop. Working Theory Beer Co. in York keeps a rotating tap list built around its staple American lager. Slow Play Brewing in Rock Hill pairs its IPAs and sours with a food truck parked onsite most days. Lake Wylie Brewing Co. serves as an extension of its Fort Mill sister restaurant, and Amor Artis Brewing anchors Fort Mill's own strip. If you'd rather not drive between stops yourself, the YoCo Loco trolley runs guided tours hitting three breweries at a time on Friday evenings and Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with room for 24 people and a sound system built into the ride.
Anne Springs Close Greenway, a 2,100-acre preserve that's been open for years, is the other sure bet. The Lake Haigler Loop is an easy, mostly flat 3.5-mile walk around the lake, and fall is genuinely the best season to do it, when the tree cover along the water turns. The Gateway Canteen at the greenway's entrance serves food and drinks and doubles as a pickup spot for anyone finishing their brew trail passport, since it counts as a bonus stop on the route.
If you want a plan you can put on the calendar without wondering whether it's actually happening, the Town of Clover has already confirmed Feis Chlobhair, the Clover Highland Games, for Saturday, November 14, 2026, at New Centre Park. The event runs 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and celebrates Clover's historic ties to its sister city, Larne, in Northern Ireland, through caber toss and stone throw competitions run by the Southeastern Highland Athletics Group, along with Celtic music and craft vendors. Vendor applications close October 23. Unlike the preserve's trail network or the pizza restaurant on Main Street, this one has a confirmed date from the town itself, not a blog post's best guess.
The bigger takeaway for anyone who's lived here through a few of these growth cycles is that York County genuinely has more coming this year than it's had in a while. The trick is separating what's confirmed from what's aspirational before you build a weekend around it. Check the park's hours before you load the truck with fishing gear. Call ahead before you drive to Main Street for pizza. And if you want a date you can actually put in ink, put November 14 in first.
If watching this stretch of York County fill in with new parks and new storefronts has you wondering what it's doing to property values around Rock Hill and Clover, that's the kind of question worth a real conversation rather than a guess. MaryJo Burd tracks these shifts as part of covering the Fort Mill to Charlotte corridor daily, and can walk you through what a home near any of these spots is actually worth right now.
I am excited to collaborate with you, offering my wealth of experience and commitment to making your real estate journey smooth, rewarding, and ultimately successful. Let's work together toward your goals.
MaryJo Burd
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