Bloom Fest, New Trail Miles, and the Weekend Leo-Cedarville Connects Two Towns on Foot

If you asked most people in Leo-Cedarville how to get from the trail parking near Amstutz and Hosler roads to the sports complex over in Grabill, they would tell you to drive. That answer was correct for years. As of this Saturday, it is not.

This weekend gives you a reason to test that. Bloom Fest, the town's local arts and nature festival, returns to Riverside Gardens Park on August 8, and the timing lines up with something bigger than one festival day. Over the past eighteen months, Fort Wayne Trails and Allen County have quietly finished stitching together a trail network that now runs just under 5.5 miles, linking Leo-Cedarville to Grabill and touching five separate parks along the way, according to Fort Wayne Trails. If you have not been out to the newer segments yet, this is the weekend to go.

What actually changed, and when

The trail work happened in two pushes, not one big ribbon cutting. The first came in March 2025, when crews finished a 1.5-mile stretch along Halter Road and Hosler Road, running from Hursh Road to Amstutz Road, right through the heart of Leo-Cedarville. Kent Castleman, executive director of Fort Wayne Trails, described it at the time as the product of years of coordination:

"This trail represents true collaboration with so many partners working over the last seven years to accomplish this 5-mile trail connecting two main street communities and five parks."

That quote, reported by the Journal Gazette, was describing a 5-mile network. Eight months later, in November 2025, two more segments closed the gaps: half a mile connecting Metea Park North to the existing trail at Hursh and Halter, and 0.45 miles linking Grabill Road to the Leo-Grabill Sports Complex. That second round is what pushed the total past 5.5 miles.

Here is how the pieces fit together:

The whole initiative, funded through a mix of county, town, and capital improvement board dollars totaling close to $5.4 million, is documented in that same Fort Wayne Trails release. If you want the receipts on funding sources, they are there in black and white.

There is one more piece worth knowing about if you plan to use the trail regularly. According to the city's own March 2026 project status report, the town purchased the property at the southwest corner of Amstutz and Hosler specifically to build a dedicated trail parking lot, with completion targeted for early summer 2026. Signage and an information kiosk are planned for later, but not part of this phase. If that lot is finished by the time you read this, it means you can now park once, near the middle of town, and walk in either direction, toward Grabill on one side or Metea Park on the other, without moving your car again.

The weekend that shows what this is for

Bloom Fest itself has grown into one of the bigger single-day draws in this part of the county. Riverside Gardens Park, the nine-acre venue at 14701 Schwartz Road, hosted more than 150 local artists, artisans, and nature vendors last year, along with food trucks, live music, and children's activities, according to Whatzup's coverage of the 2025 event. The park is dog-friendly, and the splash pad stays open during the festival for anyone who wants to cool off. Last year's event charged a $5 parking fee, with proceeds split between renting the park again the following year and a donation to Grabill Missionary Church Children's Services, and a portion also went to Jennifer's Harbor, a local nonprofit supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

The festival is confirmed for August 8, 2026, according to Bloom Fest's own site. If the pattern from prior years holds, expect the same 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. window.

Before or after the festival, the rest of the day is already set up for you:

• Steady Eddy's Station, on the banks of the Cedarville Reservoir, serves locally sourced meals and craft beer and wine, and doubles as the Leo location for Fort Wayne Outfitters canoe and kayak rentals if you want time on the water first.
• Leo Cafe, the town's longtime scratch kitchen, is under new ownership. Matt and Ashley Robertson took over and reworked the menu, according to a Nextdoor business profile, so if you have not been in for breakfast lately, it is not quite the menu you remember.
• Hurshtown Reservoir stays open for canoe rental and fishing from May through September, a separate body of water from Steady Eddy's dock, worth knowing if a friend mixes the two up.
• The Leo-Cedarville Imagination Station, a wooden playground, is an easy add-on stop if kids need to burn off energy that the splash pad did not use up.

Why the trail matters more than the festival

None of this requires the new trail miles to work. You could always drive to Bloom Fest, park in the field across Schwartz Road, and drive home. What changed is that you no longer have to treat these stops as separate car trips scattered across town.

Riverside Gardens Park already had its own internal biking and walking trails, a nice loop if you stayed inside the park. What is different now is that the town-wide network reaches past the park boundary. From the Amstutz and Hosler area, the connected trail runs through the Halter and Hosler corridor to Hursh Road, ties into the Metea Park North segment finished last November, and on the other side reaches toward the Leo-Grabill Sports Complex. That is a genuinely different kind of Saturday: park near downtown, walk to one thing, bike to another, and skip the third car trip you used to take for granted.

If you already live here, this is the kind of shift that is easy to miss because nothing about your house changed. The park is still the park. The reservoir is still the reservoir. What changed is the space between them, and that space is now something you can cross under your own power instead of a windshield.

Further down the calendar

Bloom Fest is not the only thing worth marking down. The GEM Farmers Market has been running on Thursdays at the Leo-Cedarville Farmers Market location this season, based on the current schedule. Riverside Gardens Park also hosts the She Means Business women-owned vendor market on August 29, 2026, and Cedar Creek has had paddle socials through the summer for anyone who wants a lower-key version of the water access Steady Eddy's and Hurshtown Reservoir offer.

None of these are new attractions built to impress visitors. They are the same small, recurring rhythms that have always defined this town. What is new is how many of them you can now reach without starting your car.

If you are weighing a move within Leo-Cedarville, curious what a particular street's proximity to the trail is actually worth, or just want to talk through what the next phase of this trail buildout might mean for property near it, First Response Realty knows this town street by street. Reach out and we will walk you through it, on foot if you would rather.