The Solana trailhead behind the Marriott parking structure has always been a quiet place to start an evening walk. What is new this year is what happens at the other end of it. Ten minutes in, past the shade structure and the underpass that ducks you beneath Solana Boulevard, the trail spits you out within sight of a lit patio, a chophouse host stand, and the smell of wood-fired pizza. Until this spring, that walk ended at a parking lot. Now it ends at dinner.

That is the actual story here, and it is easy to miss if you only think of Westlake's trail system as a fitness amenity. The trails did not get longer this year. What changed is what sits at their endpoints, and that changes what a walk after work is actually for.

Six Trails, and the Two That Matter Right Now

Westlake's own parks and trails page puts the network at more than 15 miles, built to an average width of 8 feet, with five trailheads and five covered shelter areas along the way. The town's printed trail guide names six segments: Dove-Davis, Solana, Granada, Glenwyck, Entrada Loop and Entrada Canal, each tracing the roads and neighborhoods they're named for. The guide also flags where you'll find parking, pedestrian underpasses, drinking fountains, and a scatter of historical markers along the route, per the Parks & Recreation page.

Four of those six trails have existed for years and mostly connect neighborhoods to each other. The other two, Solana and Entrada Canal, are the ones doing new work in 2026. Solana threads directly into the retail plaza behind the Marriott. Entrada Canal runs alongside the still-developing Entrada project itself, and it is the one to watch over the next year or two for reasons that have nothing to do with fitness.

The Loop Locals Actually Rate

If you want proof this network gets used rather than just funded, look past the town's own numbers to how residents rate it. The most-logged route on AllTrails combines Dove-Davis, Glenwyck, Granada and Solana into a single loop, clocking in at roughly 5.5 kilometers with about 37 meters of elevation gain. It carries a 4.9-star average across more than 50 community reviews. For a flat suburban trail system in North Texas, an elevation gain that modest paired with a rating that high is a tell. Nobody rates a trail 4.9 stars because it's convenient. They rate it that high because the shade holds, the surface stays even, and the loop actually goes somewhere.

The second-most popular combination, Dove-Davis and Granada without the Solana leg, comes in with noticeably less elevation gain, 22 meters against the full loop's 37. The extra distance and climb of tacking on the Solana segment isn't the draw by itself. It's the piece that ends near food.

Where the Solana Segment Actually Ends

The reason that matters now and not two years ago comes down to what opened at the far end. The hotel formerly known as Marriott Westlake completed a full renovation this year and reopened as the Ricardo Marriott, named for Ricardo Legorreta, the architect who designed the original hotel and the surrounding Solana Plaza. Dallas-based Coury Hospitality led the overhaul, and the centerpiece of the renovation is the dining lineup that came with it.

Walk the Solana trail into that plaza today and you have real choices, not just a hotel bar. SGR, short for Solana Great Room, serves breakfast through dinner inside the Ricardo Marriott. House of Toro Chophouse and Patio sits in the same building for the kind of dinner you'd otherwise drive to Southlake for. Mar-Cosina handles Tex-Mex a few doors down. La Scala Pizzeria, family-owned since 1996, has quietly outlasted every other tenant turnover in that plaza. Sip | Stir Coffee House, run by a husband-and-wife team, covers the morning version of the same walk.

None of this required a car. That is the part worth sitting with if you've lived in Westlake long enough to remember when Solana Plaza was mostly conference rooms and a Starbucks kiosk.

Entrada Canal Is Following the Development, Not the Other Way Around

The Entrada Canal trail, named for the development it runs through, sits alongside a project that is still filling in. Entrada is Westlake's master-planned mixed-use project designed to emulate the architecture of Catalonia in northeastern Spain, and the town's own Entrada page describes it as featuring offices, retail, hotels and entertainment alongside more than 300 residential units.

The corner of Davis Boulevard and Highway 114 is the part you can already see. A Starbucks opened there first and, per the town's own development update, it anchored what is now a fully occupied retail corner at that intersection. Walk the canal trail today and you're moving alongside a project still under construction more than one already finished, which means the loop reads differently depending on which month you walk it. That's a feature of watching Entrada fill in over the next year or two, not a flaw in the trail itself.

Twenty-Two Years of Shade Is Why None of This Feels New

Westlake has held Tree City USA status for 22 consecutive years and has picked up the program's Growth Award four times.

That distinction from the National Arbor Day Foundation's Tree City USA program matters more than it sounds like it should. A young master-planned town could have paved 15 miles of trail and called it done. Westlake instead has two decades of tree board decisions, planting requirements, and canopy management behind those trails, which is the difference between a trail that looks freshly poured and one that already has mature shade by the time you're three minutes in. That is not a small thing in a Texas summer, and it's part of why the Solana and Dove-Davis segments read as established rather than new construction, even with fresh restaurants at one end.

What This Means for a Fall Evening

None of this requires waiting for anything. The Solana loop is walkable tonight, the underpasses and shelters are already built, and the dining options at the far end are open now, not pending. What's genuinely different heading into fall is that the walk itself has a destination that didn't exist a few months ago, and a second one, Entrada Canal, that runs alongside a development still finding its shape. If you've been doing the same out-and-back along Dove-Davis for years, the Solana leg is worth adding. If you've been driving to Southlake for dinner out of habit, it might be worth checking whether the trail gets you there faster than the car does.

Westlake residents who've watched this town fill in a piece at a time know that the map keeps changing under their feet, usually for the better. If you're curious what any of this build-out, from the Ricardo Marriott renovation to Entrada's slow arrival, means for your own street or your home's value, the team at The Wall Team Signature has been tracking these changes as they happen, not after the fact. You can start with a no-obligation look at where your home stands today through our instant home valuation tool, or just reach out if you want to talk through what's actually changing in your corner of Westlake.