Every October, a herd the size of a small livestock auction takes over sections of the Northaven Trail. Dorper and Katahdin sheep. Spanish, Boer, and Alpine goats. A rotating cast of roughly 400 animals, tended around the clock by shepherds and their Border Collies, working from US-75 westward toward Webb Chapel Road, one thatched acre at a time. Last fall the herd covered 1.5 to 6 acres a day and cleared 30 of the trail's 50 wildflower zones in about a week. The organization that runs the program says its "furry friends" are coming back this fall.
If you've walked the trail near St. Judes or jogged the stretch between Inwood and the YMCA, you already know the drill: an electric fence line, a GPS collar on one lucky animal so people can track the herd's progress online, and a corner of North Dallas that briefly smells like a county fair. What most trail users don't know is who actually put the goats there, and that answer says something about how this particular strip of green space actually works.
The City Built the Pavement. Neighbors Built Everything Else.
The Northaven Trail is a Dallas Parks and Recreation project, and the department keeps it paved, watered, and maintained the way any city trail is maintained. But the texture that makes the Northaven Trail feel different from a plain hike-and-bike path, the wildflowers, the movie nights, the holiday lights, the goats, comes almost entirely from Friends of Northaven Trail, a volunteer nonprofit that supplements the city's basic upkeep with its own fundraising, labor, and, apparently, livestock rental.
The goat program started small. Board member Will Dawson has said the original idea was to hire 15 or 20 animals to handle a mowing problem: the trail's 50 no-mow pollinator zones grow thick with invasive plants every summer, and running mowers or spraying herbicide through them defeats the point of a wildflower meadow. Somewhere between the pitch and the first grazing season, the plan grew into a herd of 400. Dallas Parks staff pointed the Friends toward Open Space, a land-clearing company that specializes in this kind of work, and what began as a maintenance workaround turned into one of the first urban targeted-grazing projects of its kind in Texas.
The mechanics are straightforward once you see them in action:
- The herd starts near US-75 and works west, typically finishing in five to seven days depending on how much thatch is in the way.
- Shepherds and Border Collies stay with the animals around the clock.
- One animal wears a GPS tracker so trail users can follow the herd's location.
- As the goats and sheep eat through the tangled upper thatch layer, their hooves aerate the soil underneath, which helps native seed germinate for the following spring.
- The whole operation is funded by donations, not by the city's parks budget.
That last point is the one worth sitting with. A neighborhood amenity that looks like it came from a city planning document is actually the product of a homeowners' volunteer board deciding that mowed grass wasn't good enough for their trail.
The Board Behind the Herd
Friends of Northaven Trail traces back to the volunteers who pushed for the trail's construction in the first place, back when the project inspired more anxiety than affection. An early account of the trail's history captured the mood of the original debate with a question skeptics asked at the time: "who will be in my neighborhood if we build it?" That was more than a decade ago. The trail officially opened in April 2012, and the western stretch to Denton Drive was completed in 2020. Late in 2023, TxDOT moved a 201-foot pedestrian bridge into place over US-75 in a single 20-hour weekend push, connecting Northaven to the White Rock Creek Trail and Cottonwood Creek Trail on the east side. Dallas-based muralist Chera Creative later painted the trail's flora and fauna across eight of the bridge's support pillars.
None of that construction explains why the trail now draws more than 30,000 walkers, joggers, and cyclists a month, according to the Friends' own figures. That part is a volunteer effort. Board members Dorothy Buechel and Will Dawson show up in nearly every account of the trail's programming, and longtime Preston Hollow residents Martin Goodman and his wife, Claudia Werner, live directly behind one of the 50 wildflower zones the goats maintain.
"As more people move into the neighborhood, it's fun to see them discover the trail."
That's Goodman's read on the growth, offered at one of the Friends' spring fundraisers. It captures the thing the goats are really doing: turning a maintenance chore into a reason for people who've lived here for decades to meet the people who just moved in.
A Calendar That Runs Well Past October
The goats get the headlines, but they're one entry on a fuller calendar the Friends keep running through the year, entirely on donated time and money:
- Rhythm & Blooms, an adults-only spring fundraiser now in its third year, held this April at Jonathan's with live music from Matt Banks & The Blue Five and proceeds going straight to the wildflower meadows.
- The Prairie Plant Rescue, a partnership with students from St. Mark's School of Texas that rehomed native Blackland Prairie grasses and shrubs, rescued from a site slated to become a warehouse complex, into the meadow between St. Michael's and Pebbledowne Drives.
- Movie Night on the Trail, a picnic-blanket screening sponsored by Corner Bakery at Preston and Forest and Shake Shack at Preston and Royal.
- The Bagel Run, a long-running community race hosted by the Aaron Family Jewish Community Center of Dallas.
- Art on the Trail, hosted by Northaven United Methodist Church at its shaded Preston Road access point, where picnic tables and live oaks make a regular gathering spot for parents walking students home from Dealey Elementary.
- Deck the Bridge, which turns the Joes Creek crossing into a lit-up holiday landmark each winter.
- North Texas Giving Day, the Friends' biggest single fundraising push of the year, held every September.
Local retailers show up in the mix too. Flower Child at Preston Royal has donated a share of its sales on trail fundraiser days. ROAM Fine Goods, part of the Joyville family of stores that also includes Favor the Kind and Earnest John, runs a give-back program that sends 15 percent of sales to a host charity during in-store events, and the trail nonprofit has been on that list. None of these businesses are required to participate. They do it because enough of their customers are also trail regulars for it to matter.
What This Means for Your Next Walk
If you're planning a run or a dog walk on Northaven this month, keep an eye on the eastern half of the corridor first. Last year's herd started near US-75 and worked west toward Webb Chapel, and if the pattern holds this fall you will likely spot the crew there before they reach the western trailheads. The electric fence does exactly what the warning signs say it does if you get curious. The trail's six informational kiosks, at access points along Royal Lane, Midway Road, Inwood Road, Webb Chapel Road, and Hillcrest Road, are the fastest way to check where the herd currently stands without pulling up a phone.
Early morning is still the best time to beat the crowd at the Hillcrest crossing, where the Friends have been working with the city to get a pedestrian-activated HAWK beacon installed in place of the current traffic signal. And if you're coming from the east side near Cindi's Deli or want to end near North Haven Gardens on the west end, both trailheads sit close enough to the goats' expected route that you can plan a walk around wherever the herd happens to be that week.
None of this is city programming in the way most people assume. It's a small group of neighbors who decided a power-line easement deserved a real personality, and then spent more than a decade building one, wildflower zone by wildflower zone, fundraiser by fundraiser, goat by goat.
If you're the kind of person who wants to know who's actually behind the things that make a neighborhood feel like itself, that curiosity tends to serve you well here. Holly Davis & Amy Farris work and live across these same Dallas and Cedar Creek Lake communities, and we're always happy to talk shop about the neighborhood, goats very much included. Reach out anytime.
