On August 29, Rocket Field fills with smoke for Oconee's Best BBQ Contest. Seven weeks later, on October 17, the same lawn hosts the 52nd annual Oconee Fall Festival, the town's biggest single day of the year. Most people who live within walking distance of downtown will drive to both. That is about to change, and the reason has nothing to do with parking.
For the first time, a resident in Simonton Place or Calls Creek can walk from a subdivision street to Main Street without crossing a highway shoulder or cutting through a ditch. The connector that makes this possible, a covered pedestrian bridge behind Rocket Field, was still under construction when this year's calendar was set. It is the missing piece in a walking network the city has been assembling in stages since 2022, and this fall is the first season it comes together as one continuous route rather than a collection of disconnected projects.
Two Saturdays, Same Question
Rocket Field has hosted Watkinsville's gatherings for decades. The name goes back to the late 1950s or early 1960s, when a group of local parents started a football and basketball program on what had been the athletic field for the old Oconee County High School. In 2022, a partnership between the city, private donors, and area healthcare stakeholders rebuilt it into something closer to what it is today: a full-size softball and little league field with a scorer's box, concession stand, LED lighting, a bandstand, and even pétanque courts added at residents' request during public input sessions.
That redevelopment made Rocket Field a real gathering place. What it did not do, until this year, was make it easy to reach on foot from the neighborhoods just behind it.
Mayor Brian Brodrick has been direct about why that gap mattered. Discussing the bridge project in January, he said the goal was straightforward: he wants a healthy, walkable downtown. The city had hoped to finish the bridge by March or April of this year, which puts it on track to be standing, if not fully landscaped, for both Saturdays on this fall's calendar.
"That stuff holds the community together. As you grow, you have to double down on your community's history."
Brodrick said that about the decision to design the bridge as a tribute to the historic Elder Mill Covered Bridge, which once carried U.S. 441 traffic across Calls Creek and now spans Rose Creek nearby. The builder constructing the new span, Mark Thomas, is the great-grandson of the man who physically moved the original Elder Mill bridge to its current location. According to Brodrick, Thomas won the bidding process in part because he wanted the project to honor his family's legacy.
What $3.75 Million Actually Bought
The bridge itself is a small piece of a larger, and considerably more expensive, undertaking. In 2024, Watkinsville secured a $1,530,405 grant and a $2,225,000 loan from the Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank for what the city calls the Simonton Bridge Road Pedestrian Connector. That is more money than the city's entire general fund operating and capital budget for fiscal year 2026, which closed out this past June at $3,349,297. For a town of roughly 3,385 residents, that ratio is the real story: without state financing, the city estimated this project would have taken five to seven years to complete. With it, officials expect to finish in less time and at close to half the eventual cost.
Here is what that money is actually building, broken into its separate pieces:
| Project | What it connects | Funding source |
|---|---|---|
| Covered bridge and Mulberry Street path | Rocket Field to Watkinsville Cemetery, with a side path continuing to Simonton Place | Part of the $3.75M GTIB grant and loan |
| Thomas Farm Preserve pathway | The 100-acre preserve to Watkinsville First Baptist Church and on to Wire Park, wide enough for cyclists | Public-private partnership |
| Rocket Field redevelopment (2022) | Turned a century-old, underused field into the park's current form | City funds, private donations, healthcare-sector partners |
Each piece was planned and funded separately. Together, they are what finally lets a resident walk from a subdivision behind the cemetery to a bandstand concert or a BBQ contest without getting in a car.
The Walk, Step by Step
The route, once complete, works like this:
- Start on a residential street in Simonton Place, one of the neighborhoods that has asked the city for a safer walking connection to downtown for decades.
- Follow the new side path along Simonton Bridge Road to the Watkinsville Cemetery.
- Cross the covered bridge over the stream behind the cemetery, built to a design that echoes the historic Elder Mill bridge.
- Continue along the paved section of Mulberry Street, past the Yukiko Marable Garden, to Rocket Field.
- From Rocket Field, downtown Main Street, Bird & Brass, and the courthouse are a short block away.
City documents describe this as the connection residents along Simonton Bridge Road have asked for "for decades," citing the road's narrow shoulders and difficult topography as the reason it never got built sooner. The bridge is the hardest and most expensive part of that ask, and it is the part finishing this year.
Where the Path Ends
The walk from Rocket Field into downtown ends, for most people, somewhere on Main Street. One stop worth the extra two minutes is Bird & Brass, a gift, home decor, and fine art shop at 13 N. Main St. founded by local artist Erika Pfluke. The shop runs a rotating calendar of art classes and bakery pop-ups, and it keeps Tuesday through Saturday hours built around the kind of foot traffic downtown Watkinsville is trying to encourage. It is a small business, but it is the kind of detail that makes a new sidewalk mean something. A path is only as good as what it leads to, and this one leads somewhere people already want to go.
A State Award for Something Residents Already Feel
None of this happened in isolation. Earlier this year, the Georgia Municipal Association, working with Georgia Trend Magazine, gave Watkinsville its 2026 Visionary City Award in the Small Cities category, citing thoughtful planning and strong community partnerships. Awards like that are easy to read as marketing. This one lines up with something more concrete: a city that has spent four straight years turning disconnected pieces of land, a century-old ballfield, a private preserve, a cemetery access road, into a single walkable system, funded in part by financing most towns this size never pursue.
The Fall Festival on October 17 will be the 52nd time Watkinsville has held it. What changes this year is not the festival. It is how many people can reach it without starting a car, and what that says about a small city that keeps choosing to spend money on the parts of downtown that are hardest to finance and easiest to take for granted.
If you are already walking these streets, you will notice the difference before anyone writes about it. If you are thinking about what it might mean to live closer to a downtown built this deliberately, the Holly Purcell Group knows Watkinsville block by block, project by project, and is glad to talk through what a neighborhood like this actually offers once you look past the festival banner. Reach out anytime.
