Northwest Lincoln Has Two Trail Networks, and They Never Meet
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Two joggers could leave their front doors on the same August evening, five minutes apart by car, and never cross paths. One loops the Highlands Trail past the golf course and back to Fredstrom Elementary. The other circles Fallbrook's town center, past Toast and the Super Saver, and comes home a different way. Both would tell you they live in northwest Lincoln. Neither would be wrong. But ask either one how to get from their loop to the other's, and the answer is the same: get in a car.
That's the part of northwest Lincoln that doesn't show up in a drive-by impression of the area. From the road, Highlands and Fallbrook read as one continuous stretch of newer subdivisions off U.S. 34 and Interstate 80. On the ground, they function as two separate villages with their own trail systems, their own pool, their own dinner strip, and almost no paved connection between them. The neighborhood isn't one loop. It's two loops that happen to share a zip code.
The Highlands Trail is a tidy 3-mile paved loop that does exactly what a neighborhood trail should do: it connects the places people already need to go. On its south end it runs through Nebraska Technology Park. On the north end, a spur breaks off toward Fredstrom Elementary. In between, it tracks the edge of Highlands Golf Course, an 18-hole public course designed by Jeff Brauer in 1993, open and windswept in the links style, with a driving range that gets steady use from residents working on their swing before or after a round. Parking for the trail sits at two obvious spots: the golf course and pool lot off NW 12th near NW 10th and Custer, and the Fredstrom Elementary lot.
The pool in question is the Highlands Aquatic Center, a zero-entry outdoor pool with a slide and a diving board that opens Memorial Day weekend and runs through mid-August. It sits next to the golf course, and together the two make up what most Highlands residents will name first if you ask what they do on a Saturday in July.
Highlands Park itself is the connective tissue. It's a modest 11 acres next to Fredstrom Elementary with a playground, basketball courts, and tennis courts, and it's where the trail loop actually starts to feel like a neighborhood rather than a subdivision. Beyond the loop, the Highlands Trail ties into the Superior Street Trail, which is how a Highlands resident extends a short evening walk into a longer one without ever needing to think about what's happening a mile and a half northwest in Fallbrook.
Fallbrook runs on a different logic entirely. It's a 700-acre planned community built in the New Urbanism style, which in practice means narrow streets, alley-loaded garages, and a trail system built to circle the whole development rather than radiate out from a single park. That system runs roughly 11 miles, nearly four times the length of the Highlands loop, and it's built for runners and bikers as much as for an evening stroll.
The gravitational center is Fallbrook Town Center, a walkable cluster of restaurants and shops that residents actually use as a destination rather than a pass-through. Toast anchors one end for a sit-down dinner. Zipline Tap & Grill covers the casual night-out crowd. NEW DAY Coffee + Smoothie handles the morning and midday traffic. 402 Creamery brings the after-dinner stop. Two boutiques, 555 Boutique and The Nines Boutique, round out the retail side. A few minutes' walk away, the Fallbrook Marketplace houses a 24-hour Super Saver with a bakery, deli, and floral counter, which functions as the neighborhood's grocery run in a way that doesn't require getting on U.S. 34.
Fallbrook also has its own pool, and it's a genuinely notable one. The Fallbrook YMCA is one of eight YMCA locations in Lincoln, but only one of three with an outdoor pool, alongside an indoor pool, a cardio and free weight room, group cycling, and a child watch center. For a Fallbrook family, that single building covers most of what a Highlands family gets from two separate places, the golf course pool and a standalone rec center.
Here's the part that surprises people who've lived in one half of northwest Lincoln without spending much time in the other. Despite sitting a few minutes apart by car, the Highlands Trail and the Fallbrook trail system don't connect. Highlands ties into the Superior Street Trail. Fallbrook's loop circles back on itself. Neither trail description mentions the other, because there's no paved link between them.
That gap matters more than it sounds like it should. It means a Fallbrook resident who wants to golf a round at Highlands, or a Highlands resident who wants to walk to dinner at Toast, is not extending their evening walk. They're making a decision to drive to a different part of the neighborhood entirely. The two halves of northwest Lincoln are close enough to feel like one place and far enough apart, trail-wise, to function as two.
There's exactly one recurring event that reliably pulls people across that gap, and it happens every other Thursday from early June through mid-October. The Thursday Farmers' Market in Fallbrook sets up in the Fallbrook Town Square Greenspace from 4 to 7 p.m., and it's explicit about who it's for. It's run by the Northwest Lincoln Kiwanis Club, and its stated draw is Fallbrook, Highlands, and Airpark residents alike, along with the steady stream of commuters who use U.S. 34. Live music and a bounce house keep it from feeling like a strictly transactional produce stop, which is probably why it functions as the one predictable night when someone from the Highlands side of the neighborhood has an actual reason to park at Fallbrook Town Center instead of driving downtown or staying on their own side of the loop.
Everywhere else in the calendar, the two halves run in parallel. Golf and the aquatic center fill the Highlands side of a summer weekend. The YMCA pool and an evening at Zipline fill the Fallbrook side. The market night is the exception, not the rule, and it's worth planning around if you want to see both crowds in the same place at once.
If you're deciding where to eat on a given night, the choice usually comes down to which side of the neighborhood you're already on, not which restaurant sounds best in the abstract. On the Highlands side, 1st Street carries the load:
On the Fallbrook side, the choice runs through Town Center instead: Toast for a sit-down meal, Zipline Tap & Grill for something more casual, and 402 Creamery if the plan shifts to dessert.
Neither strip is a short walk from the other. A 1st Street dinner in Highlands and a Toast reservation in Fallbrook are two different errands, not two options on the same night out.
None of this is a complaint about northwest Lincoln. It's a description of how the place actually works, which is different from how it reads on a map. The neighborhood isn't a single amenity zone with two entry points. It's two smaller, complete communities, each with its own pool, its own trail loop, its own grocery run, and its own restaurant row, that happen to share a highway and a school district. Knowing which side you're standing on tells you more about your week than knowing you live in "northwest Lincoln" ever will. It tells you whether Saturday morning means a tee time at Highlands or a lap on the Fallbrook loop before the Super Saver opens. It tells you whether dinner means 1st Street or Town Center. And twice a month, from June through October, it tells you where to find your neighbors from the other side of the gap.
If you're curious how either side of this neighborhood is actually performing for sellers or what a home near one loop or the other is worth compared to the same square footage two miles away, Amy Birkholz tracks both halves of northwest Lincoln closely enough to tell you which side of the trail gap you'd be buying into.
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