3 Parks in Indian Trail NC: What’s in Each One

If you have searched for parks in Indian Trail NC, you have probably come away with a different number every time, because the listing sites do not agree with each other and none of them agree with the town. The Town of Indian Trail runs exactly three: Crooked Creek Park, Chestnut Square Park and Crossing Paths Park. That count isn’t an estimate. It is the count the town uses in its own Fiscal Year 2027-2031 Capital Improvement Plan, which the Town Council adopted on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, in a funded project that puts two EV chargers at each of the town’s three parks and then names all three.

Below, you get each park on its own terms: what’s actually in it, what you can book, what it costs, and the hours the town publishes. You also get the part nobody else sorts out, which is the list of places that carry an Indian Trail address and are run by somebody else entirely. One is a county park. One belongs to a youth sports nonprofit. One is a separate town with its own mayor. And one is a subdivision with the word Park in its name.

18 min read | Living in South Charlotte

What This Story Covers

• How many parks in Indian Trail NC does the town run
• Crooked Creek Park, and why it is the one most people mean
• Chestnut Square Park, the courts and the turf field
• Crossing Paths Park, the small one with the amphitheatre
• Why the town park page is missing the pickleball courts
• What does it cost to reserve a shelter or a field?
• Which Indian Trail parks are not the town’s?
• What is done and what is coming
• Frequently asked questions
• About the author
• How we sourced this

How many parks in Indian Trail NC does the town run?

Three. The Town of Indian Trail runs Crooked Creek Park on Oakwood Lane, Chestnut Square Park on Chestnut Parkway, and Crossing Paths Park on Blythe Drive. The town’s Parks and Facilities page lists those three plus Town Hall, and nothing else.

What makes the number worth stating out loud is that the town puts it in writing in a budgeting document rather than a marketing one. The Fiscal Year 2027-2031 Capital Improvement Plan, which the Town Council adopted on September 22, 2026, carries a funded project to install two EV chargers at each of the town’s three parks, and then names all three: Crooked Creek Park, Chestnut Square Park and Crossing Paths Park. A capital plan has to say what it is buying and where, so you can treat that as a count rather than a round number. One caveat on what adoption means: the town manager told Council in the September 8 meeting minutes that adopting the plan “does not authorize projects but establishes a long-term planning framework.” It sets the planning picture, not the shovels.

They’re not interchangeable, so which one you want depends on what you’re going for. One holds most of what you’d actually drive across town for, one holds the courts, and one is a neighborhood-scale green space with a stage. Here’s the whole picture in one place.

The three Town of Indian Trail parks, their published amenities and the town document each list comes from, checked Tuesday, October 6, 2026.

The three Town of Indian Trail parks, their published amenities and the town document each list comes from, checked Tuesday, October 6, 2026.

Park	What the town lists	Source
Crooked Creek Park 5900 Oakwood Lane	10 amenities: 4 baseball and softball fields, 8 pickleball courts, nature playground with zipline, ADA playground, splash pad, 4 reservable shelters, 18-hole disc golf course, outdoor fitness equipment, dog park, paved walking track	2026 Program Guide
Chestnut Square Park 320 Chestnut Parkway	7 amenities: artificial turf field, 4 sand volleyball courts, 3 tennis courts, 2 reservable shelters, playground, outdoor fitness court, paved walking track	2026 Program Guide
Crossing Paths Park 120 Blythe Drive	4 amenities: amphitheatre, playground, picnic tables, paved walking track	2026 Program Guide

I went into this expecting the hard part to be ranking three parks against each other. It was not. The hard part was establishing how many there are, because the answer depends entirely on which page you land on, and the listing sites quietly fold in a county park, a private club and a neighborhood playground. The town’s own capital plan settled it in one sentence, and that is the sentence I would hand anyone who asks.

Crooked Creek Park, and why it is the one most people mean

Crooked Creek Park at 5900 Oakwood Lane carries most of what people actually drive for. The town’s 2026 Program Guide lists ten things in it, against seven at Chestnut Square and four at Crossing Paths, and nearly every draw that pulls a family across town on a Saturday is here: the splash pad, the dog park, the disc golf course, the pickleball courts and the ball fields. That’s why people come from Stallings, Matthews and Wesley Chapel rather than going to whatever’s closest.

The park is open dawn to dusk. Here’s what you’ll find in it, from the town’s own facility page and its program guide: four baseball and softball fields, eight pickleball courts, a nature playground with a zipline, a separate ADA playground, a splash pad, four reservable shelters, an eighteen-hole disc golf course, outdoor fitness equipment, a dog park, and a paved walking track. The facility page adds a mountain bike trail, trails and outdoor games, none of which appear in the printed guide.

The splash pad, and the season that just closed

This is the single most searched thing about the park, and the answer has a calendar attached to it. The town’s splash pad page states the hours plainly: open daily from 9 a.m. to 6:45 p.m., from May 18 through September 13, 2026, and closed every Tuesday for routine maintenance. So if you’re reading this in October, it’s shut for the season and won’t reopen until next May. Worth knowing before you load the car.

When it is open, the town runs two booking rules on top of the open hours. If you’re bringing fifteen or more, you have to reserve through a group reservation form, and those slots are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 11 a.m. You can also book the whole splash pad on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 7 p.m. to sunset. Everything else is first come, first served.

The dog park needs a membership, not just a visit

The Crooked Creek dog park is gated, and the gate code comes with a membership rather than with the park. You complete a dog park application online or drop it at Town Hall at 315 Matthews-Indian Trail Road, and the town issues your code. If you live in Indian Trail it’s free, whether you bring one dog or three. If you don’t, it’s $10 for one dog and $15 for two or three. The park is sponsored by Indian Trail Animal Hospital, and the facility page lists water on site.

This catches people out, because almost every other dog park in South Charlotte is walk-up. Drive over on a Saturday without your code and you’re standing at a locked gate. Sort the application first.

Eighteen holes of disc golf, free

The Creekside Disc Golf Course sits inside Crooked Creek Park, and the town’s page for it gives both the terms and the directions. It’s eighteen holes, wooded, and the admission fee is listed as free. To find the first tee, take the first exit from the roundabout and park in the lot between the dog park and the outdoor fitness equipment; the entrance to hole one is through the woods opposite the baseball complex entrance. That’s the town’s own wording, and you’ll want it, because you can’t see the course from the parking lot.

One rule covers every park in town and you should know it going in: alcohol and smoking are not allowed at any Indian Trail park. The disc golf page is where the town states it.

Chestnut Square Park, the courts and the turf field

Chestnut Square Park at 320 Chestnut Parkway is the one you book rather than the one you wander into. Its seven listed amenities lean athletic, so you’ll get more out of it with a plan than with an afternoon to kill: an artificial turf field, four sand volleyball courts, three tennis courts, two reservable shelters, a playground, an outdoor fitness court and a paved walking track.

The courts have their own hours, and they are longer than the park’s. The town’s pages for the park and its courts put tennis and sand volleyball at sunrise to 10 p.m., against dawn to dusk for the park as a whole. The reason is the lighting, and the way the town describes it is unusually generous to you: lighting for the tennis and volleyball courts “is available free of charge by periodically pressing buttons located at the light towers marked with amber bulbs.” No booking, no fee, no attendant. You press a button.

Court time is almost free too. Your one hour reservation on a tennis court or a sand volleyball court is $3 per court for residents and $5 for non-residents. The artificial turf field is the expensive one at $45 per hour for residents and $65 for non-residents, with lighting adding $20 or $25 an hour on top.

Chestnut Square is also where most of the town’s event calendar lands. The 2026 Program Guide puts Touch a Truck, Hits After Six, National Night Out, the Spooktacular trunk-or-treat and WinterFest all at this park, along with the Christmas parade that circles it. If you’ve read our South Charlotte fall events guide, this is the Indian Trail end of that calendar.

Crossing Paths Park, the small one with the amphitheatre

Crossing Paths Park at 120 Blythe Drive is the smallest of the three and the only one with a stage. The 2026 Program Guide lists four things in it: an amphitheatre, a playground, picnic tables and a paved walking track. The town’s facility page adds that it is ADA accessible and has benches, parking, a pavilion and restrooms.

Worth noticing: the guide calls the structure an amphitheatre and the website calls it a pavilion. The town hasn’t reconciled the two words, so if you’re looking for one and find the other, you’re looking at the same structure described twice.

That amphitheatre is why the park punches above its size. Comedy Under the Stars, the Juneteenth celebration and Rock the Trail all run here rather than at the bigger parks, because the park has somewhere to put a stage and somewhere for an audience to sit on a slope.

Renting it works differently from the other two parks, and it’s the only one where the town reserves a veto over your booking. You can take the picnic area with a grill for four hours at $20 for residents or $30 for non-residents, or the entire park at $25 an hour for residents and $40 for non-residents with a two hour minimum. But Crossing Paths rentals “must be approved by staff, and off-duty officers may be required on a case-by-case basis.” Outside grills and bounce houses are prohibited outright. Nothing like that appears on the Crooked Creek or Chestnut Square pages.

Why the town park page is missing the pickleball courts

Here’s the part that’ll save you a wasted search. Go to the Town of Indian Trail’s online facility directory and filter by feature, and there’s no pickleball option. Not an empty result. The word doesn’t exist in the filter list at all, which runs thirty-three options from ADA Accessible through Water and includes tennis, sand volleyball and disc golf. Check that filter, or the park’s own page, and you’d conclude the town has none.

It has eight. Its 2026 Parks and Recreation Program Guide lists “8 Pickleball Courts” under Crooked Creek Park. The town’s athletic field rentals page prices them at $7 per court per hour for residents and $14 for everyone else, and runs pickleball tournaments at $450 for a half day and $675 for a full one. The program guide also runs a pickleball camp there every summer at $95 for the week. And the town’s capital plan lists the Pickleball Courts at Crooked Creek Park as completed in Spring 2026. Three town documents say the courts are there, and one of them will rent you an hour on one. The two places you’re most likely to look, the park page and the feature filter, don’t mention them at all.

The same thing happened at Chestnut Square. The program guide lists an outdoor fitness court among its seven amenities, while the park’s own facility page runs through thirteen features without naming it. The capital plan’s Completed tab records it too: the Fitness Court at Chestnut Square Park, completed Spring 2021.

The gap runs both directions, and that’s worth saying plainly rather than making the website sound worse than it is. The facility pages carry a mountain bike trail, trails and outdoor games at Crooked Creek that the printed guide leaves out. Neither list is complete on its own. So read both, and if you’re driving over for one specific thing, call Parks and Recreation at 704-821-8114 before you go. We found the same pattern when we counted the parks in Mint Hill and the parks in Matthews, where the public record and the thing on the ground had also drifted apart.

The pickleball thing is the detail I would most want somebody to take away from this. Eight courts is not a minor amenity, and the town built them and then left them off the page a resident is most likely to check. I would not have believed the filter had no pickleball option until I opened it, and the only reason I can tell you the courts are there is that the printed program guide lists them and the town’s own rentals page will sell you an hour on one. If a town page tells you something does not exist, it is worth one phone call before you believe it.

What does it cost to reserve a shelter or a field?

Less than you’d expect, and the resident discount is real. Your shelter options across both of the bigger parks run in three blocks: morning from 9 to 11:30 a.m., afternoon from 12:30 to 3 p.m., and evening from 4 to 6:30 p.m. A small shelter is $40 a block for residents and $50 for non-residents, with an all day rate of $90 or $110. Step up to a medium shelter and it is $50 per block, or $60 if you live outside town, with all day at $100 or $120.

Your reservation time includes setup and breakdown, which is the detail people forget when they book the 4 p.m. block for a 4 p.m. start. Build that in or you’ll lose half an hour at each end.

Ball fields at Crooked Creek will cost you $15 per hour per field as a resident and $20 otherwise, with lighting at the same rate again. Tournament pricing is separate: $150 per field per day, $100 per tournament for maintenance and supplies, $15 or $20 per field for field prep, and $10 a bag for Turface.

The one thing you have to plan around is winter. The town doesn’t take shelter reservations between December 1 and the end of February. The parks stay open, the shelters are first come first served in that window, and the town notes the bathrooms stay open all year. You book through the Parks and Recreation registration site rather than by phone.

Which Indian Trail parks are not the town’s?

This is where the listing sites create most of your confusion, and it’s worth walking through them one by one, because each of these has a real Indian Trail mailing address and none of them is a Town of Indian Trail park.

Fred Kirby Park, 3505 Faith Church Road. It doesn’t appear anywhere in the town’s facility directory or on its Parks and Facilities page. Google’s own listing for it points to Union County Parks and Recreation rather than the town, and lists hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. rather than the dawn to dusk the town uses. So the fees, rules and hours you have just read do not apply there. Check with Union County before you plan around it.

Edna Love Park. This one belongs to the Indian Trail Athletic Association, a youth sports organization, and it operates on their schedule rather than the town’s. If you turn up on a Saturday morning and the field is busy with league play, that’s because it’s their field.

Carolina Courts, 240 Chestnut Parkway. A private indoor sports complex, sitting right beside Chestnut Square Park and sharing the street number pattern, which is why it keeps landing in park lists. The town does rent space there for some programs, including a winter dance event in the 2026 guide, but it’s a business rather than a park.

The Village of Lake Park. This is the big one, and it’s the one most likely to catch you. Lake Park is a separate incorporated municipality with its own council, its own parks commission and its own mayor, and it shares the 28079 Indian Trail ZIP code. Its own website describes “a village in northwest Union County” with “five parks, two swimming pools, a wading pool, a feature pool, two tennis courts, six playgrounds, and 13 ponds.” The village parks page names them: Barnett Park, Founders Park, Lake Charles Pier, Russell Park and Veterans Park, across “over sixty acres of Lake Park Parks and Common Areas,” with fishing allowed by permit in eight ponds on a catch and release basis.

None of that is run by Indian Trail, and none of it is open to you on the town’s terms. If this sounds familiar, it is the same mailing-address trap we unpicked in what county Stallings is in.

Holly Park. Worth one line because people type it. Holly Park is a residential subdivision in Indian Trail with its own neighborhood amenities rather than a public park, so a green space inside it answers to its own association rather than to the town.

Add those up and you can see how a listing site lands on five or ten. It’s counting a county park, a sports association’s fields, a private indoor facility, another town’s parks and a subdivision, all because they share a postal address. The town’s count of three is the one that tells you who actually sets the hours, the fees and the rules you’ll be held to. For more on how the town lines work around here, our piece on what Indian Trail charges you and what you get covers the services side of the same question.

What is done and what is coming

If you want to know where the parks go next, the town’s Capital Improvement Plan page is the one to read. The Town Council adopted the Fiscal Year 2027-2031 plan on September 22, 2026, and the page lists every project with its status and whether it is fully funded, partially funded or unfunded. It also keeps a Completed tab, which is the quickest way to see what the town has already finished at each park.

Start with what’s done. Chestnut Square Park Phase II was completed in Summer 2024, and the pickleball courts at Crooked Creek Park were completed in Spring 2026. Before that, Crooked Creek got power upgrades, security camera upgrades, public Wi-Fi and a story walk, all completed in Summer 2023, and the fitness court at Chestnut Square was completed in Spring 2021.

Next up at Chestnut Square is Chestnut Square Park Phase III, fully funded and in design: another multi-use turf field, field lighting, a pavilion shelter, a 23-space parking lot and a plaza with seating. A new access road into the park, running from the new parking area on the west side through the property the town acquired along Indian Trail Road, is fully funded and already under construction. Two EV chargers at each of the three parks are fully funded and in design.

The one to watch is the Southfork Crooked Creek Greenway, a fully funded multi-use path connecting US 74 to Crooked Creek Park. Its status is right-of-way acquisition, which means the town is still buying the land the path runs on, and that is usually the slowest part of any greenway.

Further out is the Price Mill Creek Greenway, which the plan describes as a “Multi-use path connecting subdivisions from Old Evergreen Parkway to Old Monroe Road through a future Town park.” Read that last phrase again. The only place a fourth Indian Trail park currently exists is inside the description of a greenway that is unfunded and still in pre-planning. There’s no name and no site attached to it, so you can expect the count of three to stay three for a while.

Separately, under facilities rather than parks, the plan carries a Community Center, described as “A multi-generational facility to potentially be used for programs, activities, athletics, and rentals.” It is partially funded and still in planning, so it is a long way from being a building.

Frequently Asked Questions About Parks in Indian Trail NC

How many parks are in Indian Trail NC?

Three. The Town of Indian Trail runs Crooked Creek Park, Chestnut Square Park and Crossing Paths Park. The town names all three in the Fiscal Year 2027-2031 Capital Improvement Plan adopted on September 22, 2026. Other parks with an Indian Trail mailing address are run by Union County, by a youth sports association, by a private business or by the separate Village of Lake Park.

Does Indian Trail NC have a splash pad?

Yes, at Crooked Creek Park on Oakwood Lane. The town lists it as open daily from 9 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. between May 18 and September 13, 2026, and closed every Tuesday for routine maintenance. It is shut outside that season, so check the dates before you drive over.

Is there a dog park in Indian Trail NC?

Yes, inside Crooked Creek Park, and it requires a membership rather than a walk-up visit. You complete a dog park application to receive the gate code. Membership is free for Indian Trail residents. Non-residents pay $10 for one dog and $15 for two or three dogs.

Where can you play disc golf in Indian Trail NC?

At The Creekside Disc Golf Course inside Crooked Creek Park. The town lists it as an 18-hole wooded course and the admission fee as free. Park in the lot between the dog park and the outdoor fitness equipment, and you will find the entrance to hole one through the woods opposite the baseball complex entrance.

Does Crooked Creek Park have pickleball courts?

Yes. The town 2026 Parks and Recreation Program Guide lists 8 pickleball courts at Crooked Creek Park, and the town athletic field rentals page prices them at $7 per court per hour for residents and $14 for non-residents. The feature filter on the town online facility directory has no pickleball option, so if you search that page alone you will conclude there are none.

Is Fred Kirby Park an Indian Trail town park?

No. Fred Kirby Park on Faith Church Road carries an Indian Trail mailing address, but it does not appear in the Town of Indian Trail facility directory or on the town Parks and Facilities page, and its Google listing points to Union County Parks and Recreation. The town hours, fees and rental rules you have read here do not apply to a visit there, so check with the county first.

About the Author

Steve Jarrell is a licensed North Carolina and South Carolina broker and the team lead of The Longleaf Group at eXp Realty, which he co-leads with his wife Amanda. Before real estate, Steve joined VisualTour as President, led its rebrand to Paradym, and led the company to its acquisition by Constellation Software in 2020. He holds an MBA from the University of Tennessee with concentrations in Marketing and Innovation. The Longleaf Group is an eXp ICON Team and a RealTrends Verified Top Team by Volume for 2026, with 140+ five-star reviews.

Steve lives in Weddington and works across Indian Trail, Stallings and the rest of eastern Union County every week, which is why the question of where one town stops and the next one starts comes up as often as it does. You can reach him at 704-774-7170.

How we sourced this

Every figure you’ve read here comes from a Town of Indian Trail document or a Village of Lake Park page we opened on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. Park counts and amenity lists come from the town’s 2026 Parks and Recreation Program Guide and its individual facility pages. Project scope, status, funding levels and completion dates come from the town’s Capital Improvement Plan page for the Fiscal Year 2027-2031 plan, which the Town Council adopted on September 22, 2026. We rechecked that page on Wednesday, October 7, 2026. Court and field rental prices come from the town’s athletic field rentals page. Fees and hours come from the facility page for each park and subfacility. Lake Park’s description of itself comes from its own website and parks page.

• Town of Indian Trail, Fiscal Year 2027-2031 Capital Improvement Plan
• Town of Indian Trail, 2026 Parks and Recreation Program Guide
• Town of Indian Trail, Parks and Facilities
• Town of Indian Trail, facility directory and feature filter
• Crooked Creek Park, Chestnut Square Park and Crossing Paths Park facility pages
• Splash pad hours and season, dog park membership and fees, and The Creekside Disc Golf Course
• Town of Indian Trail, athletic field rentals and court fees
• Indian Trail Parks and Recreation
• Village of Lake Park and its parks page
• Indian Trail Athletic Association

One thing we couldn’t confirm, so we left it out rather than estimating: acreage for all three parks. Several listing sites publish figures for Crooked Creek and Chestnut Square, they disagree with each other, and no Town of Indian Trail document we opened states an acreage, so you won’t find one above. The ratings and the operator shown on Google listings are described as Google’s listings rather than as the town’s record.

Last updated: October 7, 2026