Stand at Boerne's City Park on a Saturday morning and you have two trail systems within reach of the same entrance. One is a paved public trail that the City of Boerne built with 2007 bond money, free to walk or bike, no gate, no donation box. The other is a six-mile preserve run by a nonprofit, where dogs stay leashed, bikes are not allowed, and a professional photo session requires a permit arranged in advance. Both of them include a segment called the Cibolo Creek Trail. They are not the same trail, and most people who have lived in Boerne for years have only ever walked one of them without realizing the second one starts from the same City Park entrance.
That mix-up is not trivial. It explains why so many residents describe The Cibolo as a place they have "already done" when what they actually did was the paved downtown loop, and why first-time visitors to the nonprofit preserve are often surprised there is a whole second trail network, a working calendar of night hikes and outdoor concerts, and a set of 100-million-year-old dinosaur tracks that the city trail does not have.
Two Systems, One Confusing Overlap
The city's paved network runs 3.65 miles total across three named segments: the 1.75-mile Cibolo Creek Trail, which leaves City Park, threads past the Boerne AgriCultural Museum and Arts Center, dips toward a spot locals call Sheep Dip Crossing, and ends near Peggy's On the Green at Main Plaza; the 1.4-mile Old No. 9 Trail, a former railway corridor that runs a straight diagonal from Esser Road to Garden Street with a connector bridge to the Patrick Heath Public Library; and the half-mile Currey Trail, which the city's 2022 parks master plan has flagged for a future extension to link up with Old No. 9.
The Cibolo Center for Conservation, the nonprofit that operates as simply "The Cibolo," maintains a separate six-mile trail network across its 160-acre preserve at 140 City Park Road, the same road the paved trail starts on. Its version of the Cibolo Creek Trail hikes along the actual creek bank inside the preserve, past turtles, bass, perch, and catfish under a cypress canopy, not through downtown storefronts. This is where the naming collision starts: two trails with the identical name, one paved and public, one unpaved and preserve-only, both reachable from the same intersection.
| City's Paved System | The Cibolo (Preserve) | |
|---|---|---|
| Total mileage | 3.65 miles | 6+ miles |
| Surface | Paved concrete | Natural trail, boardwalk section |
| Managed by | City of Boerne | Cibolo Center for Conservation (nonprofit) |
| Cost | Free | Donation-based, free admission |
| Bikes allowed | Yes | No |
| Dogs allowed | Yes, leashed | Yes, leashed |
| Named segments | Cibolo Creek Trail, Old No. 9, Currey Trail | Marshland Trail, Woodlands Trail, Cibolo Creek Trail, Native Texas Prairie Trail |
What the Preserve Actually Holds
Inside the gate at 140 City Park Road, the trail system splits into distinct ecosystems rather than one continuous path. The Marshland Trail includes the ADA-accessible Cibolo Boardwalk through a restored wetland that once covered five times its current footprint. The Woodlands Trail runs shaded under oak and juniper, popular with hikers of every skill level and home to deer and rabbits. The Native Texas Prairie Trail preserves tallgrass species through controlled burns, on ground that the organization maintains as an active wildlife management research site. Cooper's Crossing marks the spot where hikers ford Cibolo Creek to reach an additional network of trails, and it doubles as one of the most photographed corners of the property.
The detail most residents miss entirely: on June 22, 1997, a flood at the Boerne Lake Spillway uncovered an 80-foot stretch of Acrocanthosaurus footprints, tracks roughly 100 million years old. The Cibolo cast exact replicas and placed them at its trailheads, so the walk that starts at the same road as a paved downtown loop also passes real dinosaur track impressions. Nothing on the city's paved system compares.
The Calendar Locals Actually Track
The preserve is not a place you visit once and check off. It runs on a recurring schedule that rewards people who pay attention to it.
The Moondance Outdoor Concert Series has run since 2000, staged under the property's Oak Motte next to a butterfly garden. Cibolo Special Events Coordinator Michele Guyer told Texas Public Radio "the last Saturday of the month is our schedule this year," landing each show on the Saturday closest to the full moon. The 2026 lineup runs Cactus Country on May 30, Texas String Assembly on June 27, a Johnny Cash tribute act called Band in Black on July 25, Gleaux on August 29, and Lost Mule Band closing the season on September 26. Doors open at 6 p.m., music runs 7 to 9, and tickets run $15 with kids 11 and under free with an adult. As of this writing, September 26 is the only date left this year, which makes it the last chance in 2026 to catch the tradition before it picks back up next spring.
Beyond the concert series, the preserve runs recurring programming that a casual visitor would never stumble into on their own. Adult Night Hikes send small groups onto unfamiliar sections of trail without flashlights, hunting for nocturnal wildlife, for $15 a person. Family Night Hikes run a shorter, gentler version at $30 per family, built around shorter attention spans. A free 30-minute walk called Noah's Nature Walk, led by the center's Education Director, starts from the back porch of the Nature Center building and covers ground most visitors never see on a self-guided trip. The local chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas holds its monthly meeting on-site as well, open to anyone curious about the conservation work behind the acreage.
Using It Well
A few practical notes for anyone treating this as an actual routine rather than a once-a-year outing:
- Trails are open dawn to dusk, seven days a week, with no entrance fee, though donations at trailhead boxes support the organization's work.
- Dogs are welcome on leash, and biodegradable waste bags are provided at trailheads.
- Bicycles are not permitted on the preserve's trails, unlike the city's paved system that starts from the same City Park entrance.
- Anyone planning a professional family or engagement photo session on-site needs to request a photography permit in advance rather than showing up with a photographer unannounced.
- The Herff Farm campus, a separate property on Herff Road under the same nonprofit, runs its own weekly farmers market and community garden programming, distinct from the trail-and-concert calendar at the City Park Road location.
None of this changes what the preserve looks like from a car window driving past on City Park Road. It changes what a resident gets out of the next visit, whether that means finally walking the ecosystem trails instead of the paved loop, catching the last Moondance date of the season, or booking a permit before a fall family photo session rather than showing up and getting turned away.
Boerne rewards this kind of attention to detail, in its parks and in its housing stock alike. If you are weighing a move within Boerne or elsewhere in the Hill Country and want a team that tracks the difference between two trails with the same name the same way it tracks pricing data on a listing, Alexis Weigand Real Estate is worth a conversation. Schedule a consultation.
