Blacklick Woods Metro Park: The Canopy Walk, Trails, And The Best Things To Do

Blacklick Woods Metro Park was the first Metro Park, and it’s the one with the Canopy Walk: a free boardwalk that loops through the treetops 40 feet above a beech-maple forest. It sits on East Livingston Avenue in Reynoldsburg, with a nature center, a golf course and a sledding hill on the same grounds.

This is the one park guide for Blacklick Woods, part of the guide to every Columbus Metro Park. It covers the Canopy Walk, the nature center, all six trails, the golf course and its free Learning Course, the picnic areas, the kid and dog rules, and what changes with the seasons.

Latest from the park (September 2026): the Canopy Walk is in its third season. It still closes until noon on the second Tuesday of every month for cleaning, so plan around that. Holiday lights went up around the nature center last December for Metro Parks’ Winter Hikes series, and the same is expected this year.

The Canopy Walk

The Canopy Walk opened on May 17, 2024, and there’s nothing else like it in a Columbus park. It’s a wide wooden boardwalk held up by more than 140 telephone poles, looping for an eighth of a mile through maples, beeches, oaks and shagbark hickories. The deck stands 40 feet above the forest floor and the buttonbush swamp, so in summer you’re eye level with the birds and in late fall you can see the whole structure through bare branches.

Getting up there is 72 steps on a zigzag staircase, or an elevator ride from the tower near the nature center. The elevator makes the whole loop wheelchair and stroller friendly, and the walk from the elevator to the boardwalk is flat. Above the elevator tower there’s a second platform at 55 feet, reached by another 27 steps, which puts you above the canopy entirely.

The loop has a few detours built for play. Three rope bridges hang off the main boardwalk, and you can skip them and stay on the deck. A cargo net strung between the trees works as a hammock for up to five people. The treehouse has climbing rigging and a fireman’s pole. Metro Parks also hung bird feeders along the walk on a pulley system, so woodpeckers, nuthatches and titmice show up close.

It’s free, no ticket needed. Hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. from April through September and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from October through March. The one catch is maintenance: the Canopy Walk is closed until noon on the second Tuesday of every month. Dogs aren’t allowed on it.

The nature center

The nature center is the starting point for most visits, since the Canopy Walk’s elevator tower is right beside it. Inside are exhibits on the park’s natural history and a wall of one-way glass windows looking out on a pond and a row of bird feeders. The glass has been the center’s main draw since it opened in 1978: whatever is at the feeders or in the pond can’t see you, so it carries on as if nobody’s there. Binoculars are there to use.

Hours are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. from April through September and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from October through March. Naturalist programs run out of the center year round; the schedule is on the Metro Parks site.

All six trails

Every trail at Blacklick Woods is rated easy and every one is ADA accessible, which is rare for a park with this much swamp forest in it. The nature trails are short gravel loops near the nature center. The Multipurpose Trail and the greenway are where you go for distance.

The Buttonbush Trail is the one to walk if you only have half an hour. It circles a buttonbush swamp inside the Walter A. Tucker State Nature Preserve, a 54-acre piece of the original park that Metro Parks set aside in 1975. Ten sections of boardwalk keep it passable even in the wet months, and the three observation decks were built for the park’s nature programs.

Biking the Blacklick Creek Greenway

Two trails take bikes. The Multipurpose Trail is a gravel loop through forest and meadow, fine for a family ride. The Blacklick Creek Greenway is the real ride: 16 paved miles from Reynoldsburg south to Groveport. It links Blacklick Woods with Pickerington Ponds and Three Creeks along the way. Blacklick Woods is near the north end, so riding south is the long option. The greenway is also the park’s pet trail, so expect dogs on leashes.

Golf, and the free Learning Course

Blacklick Woods Golf Course has its own entrance at 7309 E. Livingston Ave. and two courses. The Championship Course is an 18-hole, par-72 Jack Kidwell layout with tree-lined fairways, and Columbus Business First has rated it one of the ten most difficult public courses in Greater Columbus. In 2026, Franklin County residents pay $24 for 18 holes Monday through Thursday and $16 for nine holes any day; non-residents pay $4 more. Carts are extra.

The Learning Course is the reason to bring a beginner. It’s nine holes, par 29, two par 4s and seven par 3s, and it’s free for Franklin County residents with proof of address (non-residents pay $11). It’s first come, first served and closed on Mondays for maintenance. Rental clubs are $10 for adults and $5 for juniors, so a first round costs a resident ten dollars total. There’s a full driving range, a 30,000-square-foot practice green and a 3-hole practice course next to it. The pro shop is at 614-861-3193.

Picnic areas, shelters and the lodge

The park has two big first-come, first-served picnic areas, both with grills, tables, playgrounds and restrooms. The Meadows Picnic Area has six three-sided shelters that seat about 16 each and two open shelters that seat about 64. The Ash Grove Picnic Area has two three-sided shelters, one open shelter and a half basketball court. Shelters open with the park at 6:30 a.m. and you keep one as long as someone from your group stays at it.

For a party you can book, there are four reservable shelters (Butternut and Buttonbush hold 100 each and have kitchens; Walnut holds 80; Sassafras holds 64) and the Beech-Maple Lodge, which holds 72 and has heat, air conditioning, a full kitchen, a gas fireplace and WiFi. Reservations go through reservations@metroparks.net.

Ashton Pond has benches right at the water. The park’s rangers name it as the spot for a fall sunset, when the trees around it turn and the whole scene reflects in the still water. Turtles bask on the surface and a barred owl sometimes fishes it at dusk.

Bringing kids

This is one of the easier Metro Parks with young kids, because the things they’ll want are close together. The nature center has the one-way windows and live animal programs. The Canopy Walk has the rope bridges, the cargo net and the treehouse with the fireman’s pole, and the elevator means a stroller gets up there too. The Buttonbush boardwalk is flat and short enough for a toddler to finish.

Both picnic areas have playgrounds. If you’re coming for the playground alone, the Meadows is the bigger area with more shelters to spread out under.

Bringing dogs

Dogs are limited here. They’re allowed on leashes no longer than 6 feet on the Blacklick Creek Greenway, in the picnic areas, in parking lots and on the park roads. They’re not allowed on the nature trails around the nature center, and not on the Canopy Walk. If a long dog walk is the point of the trip, the greenway gives you 16 paved miles; if you want woods trails with a dog, Three Creeks at the other end of the greenway has a dog park.

What to do here by season

Spring and summer. The Beech Trail has the park’s best wildflower show in April and May. Once the leaves are in, the Canopy Walk is a shaded loop with birds at eye level. The Canopy Walk and nature center both run their longer hours from April through September.

Fall. This is the park’s month. The beech-maple forest turns yellow and orange under the Canopy Walk usually in the second half of October, and Ashton Pond at sunset is the photo.

Winter. The sledding hill is at the golf course, off the 7309 E. Livingston Ave. entrance. The slopes are gentle, which makes it a good first hill for little kids. In December the trails around the nature center are strung with holiday lights as part of Metro Parks’ Winter Hikes series; they come on at dark and go off at 8 p.m., and you can walk them any evening. When the leaves are down, the Canopy Walk’s structure shows through the bare trees, and the 55-foot platform gets its longest view of the year.

The first Metro Park

The Columbus and Franklin County Metropolitan Park District was created in 1945, and Blacklick Woods was its first park, dedicated on October 24, 1948, as 113 acres of woods and meadow. At the time Reynoldsburg had about 700 people and there was worry the park was too far out in the country for anyone to visit. It filled up immediately. The park grew to its current size over the following decades, took over the neighboring Stoney Creek Country Club’s golf course in 1967 to keep the land out of housing, and opened the nature center in 1978.

Getting there

The park entrance is 6975 E. Livingston Ave. in Reynoldsburg. Head for the nature center: the Canopy Walk’s elevator tower is beside it. The golf course, and the sledding hill in winter, use the separate entrance at 7309 E. Livingston Ave.

For programs and the current park map, see the Metro Parks page for Blacklick Woods.

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