Little Sally Moved to High Point Before the Sidewalk Did

Park on the street near Grimes Avenue and Oak Street. Walk down Grimes. Look for a narrow path cutting into the trees on your right, tucked behind what used to be a factory. That is the only way anyone will tell you how to find Little Sally, the eighteen-foot troll made of reclaimed wood that Danish artist Thomas Dambo installed in High Point last November. There's no address on a welcome sign, no paved lot, no clear line of sight from the road. You find her the way the artist intended: by wandering into a stretch of the city most people had no reason to walk through before.

That stretch matters more than the troll does. Little Sally is sitting inside the exact footprint of a $32 million infrastructure project the city has been building toward for four years, and almost nobody visiting her for the photo op realizes it.

A troll in a construction zone

The block around 726 W. Grimes Avenue sits in what city planning documents call High Point's historic industrial corridor, a stretch of old rail beds, abandoned right-of-way, and floodplain along Richland Creek that the city and the Southwest Renewal Foundation have spent years planning to convert into a greenway. That greenway, called the Southwest Heritage Greenway, is the centerpiece of a federally funded initiative called High Point on the RISE. It is not a coincidence that Little Sally ended up here. It is the same reason she's worth visiting now instead of waiting.

Since she went up, the wait to get near her has stretched past an hour on busy weekends, according to visitor reviews on the site. People are already lining up around a construction zone to see a sculpture made from scrap wood. In a year or two, the same block will have a paved path connecting it straight into downtown.

What you can already walk without a car

Here's what most residents miss: High Point already has a continuous, paved walking and biking corridor that runs almost five miles, and it existed before anyone heard the word "troll." It starts at Armstrong Park on the east side of the city and ends at the Piedmont Environmental Center on Penny Road, where a newer pedestrian bridge picks up the last leg into High Point City Lake Park.

That's a little under five miles one-way, according to distances published on the city's own trails and greenways page. The last leg is the newest piece. It opened as part of City Lake Park's $24.5 million renovation, which also rebuilt the park's pool into a 50-meter lap pool with a lazy river, splash pad, and a dual racing water slide when it reopened in 2023. The bridge across the lake connects the park directly to the environmental center's trail network for the first time, something that required no new road, no new car trip, and no ribbon cutting big enough for most people to notice.

Once you're at the Piedmont Environmental Center, the options widen. The center itself has 6.6 miles of natural-surface trail through hardwood and pine forest along the lake. From there, the High Point section of the Bicentennial Greenway picks up and runs north toward Gallimore Dairy Road, adding another several miles of paved trail inside the city limits.

The map that isn't finished yet

Here's the part that's easy to get wrong if you're looking at a trail map instead of walking the actual pavement. The Bicentennial Greenway is billed as a 14.5-mile route connecting High Point to Greensboro, and on paper it looks like one continuous line. It isn't. The trail exists in disconnected pieces, and Greensboro's own parks department says the gap between the two cities is still something "entities from the three jurisdictions are working on a plan to complete." If you're picturing a bike ride straight from High Point Lake to Greensboro's Guilford Courthouse greenway network, that ride doesn't exist yet. The infrastructure that does exist, the roughly five miles from Armstrong Park to City Lake Park plus the environmental center's own trail loop, is real, paved, and open today.

The piece that closes the downtown gap

This is where the troll's location stops being a coincidence. Armstrong Park, the eastern anchor of that existing five-mile chain, is close to downtown but not connected to it by anything comfortable to walk. High Point on the RISE is the project built to fix that. It's funded by a $19.8 million federal RAISE grant, and the city's own project page describes a total investment of $32 million to build 4.8 miles of greenway and roadway improvements, including the Southwest Heritage Greenway that runs right past Little Sally's hiding spot, plus Complete Streets upgrades to Elm Street between Sunset Drive and West Commerce Avenue and two blocks of new bicycle boulevard.

The city's description of the project is direct about what it's meant to do: bridge a gap in the network that has kept parts of the Core City District cut off from the rest of High Point's trails, and when finished, stitch everything into one continuous 16-mile corridor for walking and biking that reaches from the southwest side through downtown to landmarks like Truist Point Stadium, the High Point Public Library, and the Qubein Children's Museum.

As of the most recent public documentation, the city hasn't published a firm completion date. The grant is secured, the route is planned through existing right-of-way and old rail beds, and the Elm Street and Southwest Heritage Greenway segments are the current focus. What that means for a resident right now is straightforward: this isn't a rumor or a renderings-only proposal. The money is committed and the alignment is set. It's under construction on the same timeline as the neighborhood's most photographed new attraction.

A weekend plan that works right now

You don't need to wait for the ribbon cutting to use what's already there. A few ways to spend a Saturday with what exists today:

• Park near Armstrong Park and walk or bike the full paved stretch to the Piedmont Environmental Center. It's flat, shaded, and crosses through University Park along the way.
• Cross the new bridge at the environmental center into City Lake Park, then loop back through the park's rebuilt Great Lawn and around the lake.
• Drive separately to Grimes Avenue and Oak Street to find Little Sally, since she isn't currently connected to the paved greenway chain. Go on a weekday morning if you want to skip the line that regulars say can wrap around the block on weekends.
• If you want more mileage, the environmental center's 6.6 miles of natural-surface trail through the hardwood forest is a quieter add-on before or after the paved sections.

None of this requires a car once you're parked at either end, and none of it existed in this connected form even three years ago. The bridge is new. The pool and Great Lawn are new. The troll is new. The sidewalk that will eventually tie the whole southwest side into downtown is being built right now, block by block, starting in the same neighborhood where a Danish artist happened to hide a giant wooden grandmother figure in the trees.

High Point residents who've lived here through the last decade of downtown's slow rebuild know the pattern: the fun thing shows up first, and the infrastructure that makes it easy to reach follows a year or two later. Little Sally is the fun thing. The sidewalk is coming.

If you're curious about what else is changing in this part of High Point, or you're weighing a move within the neighborhood and want someone who tracks these projects as they happen, Carolina Home Partners keeps a closer eye on High Point than most portals bother to. Our High Point neighborhood guide is a good next stop, and if you're ready to see what your current home is worth in a market that keeps adding amenities like this one, our team is glad to help.