Poinsett Highway's First Holiday Season Back Gives Downtown Travelers Rest a Second Street

Main Street carries about 17,000 cars a day. Highway 25 carries about 30,000. City Administrator Shannon Herman told WYFF that Poinsett Highway is the road connecting them, and for 18 months it was a corridor of partial lane closures, drainage trenches and construction noise. The city marked the end of that work with a grand reopening on Thursday, October 1.

This is the corridor's first holiday season since it reopened. Herman described the goal to WSPA as moving "away from a linear one street, Main Street, into more of a geometric central business district." The 2026 holiday events are staged along Main Street and the Swamp Rabbit Trail, so adding Poinsett to a December Saturday is up to whoever is walking downtown.

A six-month project that took four and a half years to start finishing

The schedule slipped many times. In October 2021, the city's administrator at the time told WSPA that work would start in May 2022 and take about six months. By the city's own Winter 2025 update, the target was early 2026. The ribbon was finally cut in October 2026.

According to WYFF, COVID-19 funding setbacks and supply chain disruptions drove the cost up. Herman told WSPA that a year of the work went into getting the road itself ready: deep digging, utility relocation and, above all, stormwater improvements. The road had a safety record behind it too. WYFF reported 300 collisions on Poinsett Highway in a decade, one of them fatal.

What the corridor has now

The city describes the project area as the stretch of Poinsett Highway between Main Street and State Highway 25. On foot or by bike, these are the changes that matter:

• A shared-use path. Mayor Brandy Amidon's October Talk of the Town newsletter describes it as having "plenty of room for both walkers and cyclists, plus a buffer for added separation." The city's project plan put a 10-foot multimodal path on one side of the road and a 5-foot sidewalk on the other, with planting strips between.
• A traffic signal at Tubbs Mountain Road. WSPA reported a new light at North Poinsett Highway and Tubbs Mountain Road.
• A diagonal crossing at Main and Center. WSPA listed a diagonal crossing at the Main Street and Center Street intersection among the completed project's traffic changes. The city designed it so cyclists on the Swamp Rabbit Trail cross in a single diagonal movement, while pedestrians use marked crosswalks.
• Pedestrian crossings and lighting along the corridor, plus a rebuilt and repaved roadway. In December 2025, City Council approved a plan to fund 22 solar pedestrian lights inside the project boundaries, as the Greenville Journal reported.

The finishing work was planned in stages. The city's Summer 2026 project update scheduled solar lighting installation for early September, then final paving, with trees and plants to go in "once fall temperatures are favorable." So the planting season the city was waiting for is now.

The businesses that stayed open through it

The new path matters because of where it goes. The corridor's businesses stayed open through the construction, and the city's spring update sent customers along detour signs to reach them.

Leopard Forest Coffee Company, at 403 N. Poinsett Hwy., Suite D, has been roasting specialty coffee in Travelers Rest since 2004. The city's dining guide describes it as "a small trek from Main Street." In August, a longtime barista there told WYFF that business was down about 50 percent compared with the year before. Once both lanes reopened, she said the shop had "already seen tremendous growth" within the week.

Chicora Alley Firehouse Restaurant, at 117 N. Poinsett Hwy., is the corridor's bar-and-grill. At the reopening, Chicora Alley's Ben Dixon summed up the construction years for WYFF as "Road closures ... mud ... dust." He added that he hoped the new design would slow traffic, because "People fly by here pretty fast." The city's project plan included a pedestrian crosswalk from the parking lot across from Chicora Alley.

The rest of the corridor, according to the city's own shopping and dining directories:

For anyone choosing gifts this season, a gallery, a coffee roaster and a gear shop sit within one stretch of the new path.

The holiday calendar is still staged on Main Street

The biggest downtown evening of the season is the 2026 Holiday Hop & Christmas Market on Saturday, November 28, from 3 to 7 p.m. The city's published program runs in this order:

1. 3:00 p.m. The Christmas Market opens along the Swamp Rabbit Trail with hand-picked vendors, and it runs until 7.
2. 5:00 p.m. The Jingle Paws Parade steps off from Swamp Rabbit Animal Hospital on Old Buncombe Road. It follows the trail near TR Oriental to Whistle Stop Café, then loops back to the Christmas tree.
3. 5:30 p.m. Best Dressed Pup judging takes place by the City Christmas Tree on Main Street.
4. 6:45 p.m. Carols start and the tree is lit next to Loftis Printing.

The grown-up side of the evening is Hop, Sip & Shop, a riddle hunt with wine and craft beer samples. Anyone who solves every riddle is entered to win a $50 TR Bucks gift certificate. The stops listed are Community Tap, The Tasting Room behind AM/PM Butchery, Urban Hare, the Crescent Olive, Swamp Rabbit Brewery, Wilder Plant Shop and Bespoke Wine Shop. No Poinsett Highway business appears on the route or anywhere else in the program.

That same day starts earlier at Trailblazer Park. The farmers market's Small Business Saturday runs from noon to 3 p.m. with more than 60 local makers. It ends just as the Holiday Hop begins, so the two events fill one long afternoon.

Fitting Poinsett into November 28

The corridor starts at Main Street, and Chicora Alley sits at the low end of the North Poinsett numbers. That makes a stop easy to add before or after the Hop. The order below is built around the city's published times:

• Late morning: Coffee at Leopard Forest, then the new path toward Main Street, browsing Wild Hare Gallery and Swamp Rabbit Gear & Spin along the way.
• Noon to 3: Small Business Saturday at Trailblazer Park.
• 3 to 7: The Christmas Market on the trail, the 5 p.m. Jingle Paws Parade and Hop, Sip & Shop.
• 6:45: The tree lighting by Loftis Printing.
• After 7: Dinner at Chicora Alley, a short walk from Main Street on the corridor that didn't make the program.

The city is also collecting toys for the TR Toy Drive at its upcoming events. A bag of donations can come along to any of these stops.

December 4 and December 12

Two more dates close out the season. The last Movies in the Park of the year shows "The Land of Sometimes" at Trailblazer Park on Friday, December 4.

On Saturday, December 12, the Christmas Parade runs downtown from 10 a.m. to noon with the theme "A Mayberry Christmas," according to the Greater Travelers Rest Chamber. After the parade, the Very Merry Christmas Market fills Trailblazer Park at 235 Trailblazer Drive from noon to 4 p.m. with more than 120 artisans and food makers. Last year both events fell on December 13. This year they are one day earlier, and the market keeps the same venue and the same stated vendor count.

Parade morning is another chance to start on Poinsett. A coffee order on North Poinsett and a walk down the new path end at Main Street before the 10 a.m. start. In her October newsletter, the mayor asked residents to stop by their favorite businesses on Poinsett Highway "and show them some love."

If downtown Travelers Rest is growing from one street into a district and you'd like to know how that changes the blocks around Main Street and Poinsett Highway, The Light Realty can walk the corridor with you and talk through what the reopening means for the surrounding neighborhoods. Schedule Your Concierge Consultation with Phi‑Van Cherry.