The Forest Lake Area Trail System: Connecting Kirksville and Thousand Hills

The Forest Lake Area Trail System is better understood as a trail-development network than as one finished path.

FLATS is a volunteer organization working toward better walking and biking connections between Kirksville and Thousand Hills State Park. Some major pieces are complete. Other connections have been built, planned or improved at different times.

That distinction matters if you are trying to figure out where you can actually ride or walk today.

FLATS is not a City department

The City of Kirksville lists the Forest Lake Area Trail System among community organizations.

FLATS has worked with public agencies, but it remains a volunteer organization rather than a branch of City government or Missouri State Parks.

Its role has included trail advocacy, fundraising and hands-on construction.

Kirksville has a dedicated FLATS trailhead

The City maintains the FLATS Trailhead and Rotary Nature Playscape at 105 N. Osteopathy St.

The current City page describes an ADA-accessible trail suitable for walking, jogging and biking.

That trailhead is an important Kirksville-side piece of the network, but its existence does not by itself prove one continuous separated route to every trail inside Thousand Hills.

A major State Park phase opened in 2022

Missouri State Parks opened the Carolyn Bagley Harding Trail in October 2022.

State Parks described the half-mile paved walking and biking trail as completion of phase two of FLATS.

It connects Campground 1 with the park office/day-use area and the existing Forest Lake Trail area.

That is a documented completed segment, not merely a proposal.

The network expanded substantially in 2026

On April 18, 2026, Missouri State Parks opened a 5.5-mile extension of Thousand Hills Trail.

The extension created a 16-mile loop through the park.

State Parks describes the work as a cooperative project involving:

• Missouri State Parks;
• Missouri Department of Conservation;
• FLATS.

FLATS volunteers performed much of the trail-construction labor and committed to continued maintenance.

The enlarged loop has access within the park and from the Kirksville side at Michigan Street and Rainbow Basin.

What remains difficult to summarize with one line on a map

Kirksville planning documents also describe City-side connectors, sidewalk work and reuse of former railroad corridors.

Some are completed projects; others appear in budgets, phases or construction plans.

Those statuses should not be collapsed into "the trail is finished."

The practical question is not whether FLATS has connected Kirksville and Thousand Hills in a broad project sense. It clearly has completed substantial pieces serving that goal.

The harder question is whether a specific trip from one Kirksville starting point to one park destination can be made entirely on a separated finished trail.

That should be checked against the newest official map and current signage.

A network assembled over time

FLATS has produced something more interesting than a single ribbon-cutting project.

Its history includes:

• City-side trail infrastructure;
• volunteer organization work;
• paved State Park connections;
• natural-surface trail construction;
• agency partnerships;
• a major 2026 loop expansion.

For details on the City facility itself, see FLATS Trailhead and Rotary Nature Playscape: A Kirksville Guide.

The safest current description is simple:

FLATS is a growing connected trail system with substantial completed segments, not a promise that every planned Kirksville-to-Thousand-Hills link is already one uninterrupted off-street route.