Ask a Jupiter local how the Riverwalk changed this year and most will tell you it's done. The new bridge opened, the detours are gone, and Love Street feels reachable again. That's true as far as it goes. But it's not the whole story, and the gap between what actually happened and what people assume happened matters if you're the one lacing up shoes for an evening walk.
Here's what's real: the Town of Jupiter's Riverwalk still ends where it has ended for years, at the north end of Harbourside Place, roughly two miles into a plan that was always meant to run two and a half. The stretch that would carry it across the Oxbow, past Burt Reynolds Park, and out to the water directly across from the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse is still sitting on paper. What changed this year isn't that gap. It's the crossing that used to make getting anywhere near it feel like a hassle.
A Bridge With No Sidewalks, for Almost Seventy Years
The old US-1 bridge over the Loxahatchee River dated to 1958. Two lanes in each direction, two-foot shoulders, nothing for a bike or a pedestrian. If you lived on one side of the inlet and wanted dinner on the other, you drove, full stop. That bridge shut down for good on March 13, 2023, and Florida's Department of Transportation spent the better part of three years replacing it with a $122 million twin double-leaf drawbridge.
The new structure isn't just wider. It's built for people who aren't in cars: two 11-foot travel lanes each direction, plus 8-foot sidewalks and 7-foot bike lanes on both sides, with pedestrians kept behind permanent concrete barriers instead of the narrow, unprotected two-foot shoulder the old bridge offered. The channel underneath opens to 125 feet with up to 42 feet of clearance, so boat traffic on the Loxahatchee isn't squeezed the way it used to be either. One lane in each direction reopened to drivers right around New Year's 2025, with the full four-lane crossing following through the year and the project reaching completion in early 2026.
What Actually Opened in November
The part that changed how people move on foot came before the bridge itself was finished. In November 2025, a riverwalk connection and observation deck opened underneath the south side of the new span, giving walkers and cyclists a way through that didn't exist on the old bridge at all. That connection puts you within reach of the Riverwalk area near Inlet Village, including the Charlie & Joe's at Love Street restaurant complex, without stepping into traffic to get there.
If you've been avoiding that corner of town since the closure started, this is the reason to go back. It's a genuinely new piece of infrastructure, not a reopening of something that used to exist. The old bridge never had a walkway underneath it. This one does, and it's built into the same concrete that carries the highway overhead.
The Piece the Town Hasn't Built Yet
Where this gets confused is the assumption that a finished bridge means a finished Riverwalk. It doesn't. The Town of Jupiter's own description of the project is specific about what's still outstanding: the final phase is planned along the southern shoreline of the Jupiter Inlet, directly across from the historic lighthouse, and that stretch has not been built. The walkway that's currently in place, from its start near Ocean Way through Jupiter Ridge Natural Area, along Mangrove Bay, across the Lagoon Bridge to the Jupiter Yacht Club, under the Indiantown Road Bridge at the Plaza Down Under, and up through Harbourside Place, covers about two of the intended two and a half miles. The new US-1 bridge connection extends what's walkable near the inlet. It doesn't close the loop to the lighthouse.
That distinction is worth holding onto, because it changes what you plan for. If you're picturing a continuous paved path from Ocean Way all the way to the lighthouse steps, that walk doesn't exist yet. If you're picturing a way to get from Harbourside Place toward Love Street and Inlet Village without crossing the highway on foot, that's the part that opened this year.
Walking It This Week
For anyone deciding where to actually go, the corridor breaks into a few honest segments right now:
- South end, Ocean Way to Jupiter Ridge Natural Area. Coastal scrub habitat, quiet, best in early morning before the heat sets in.
- Mangrove Bay to the Lagoon Bridge. The pedestrian and bike bridge behind the Best Western that carries you to the southern tip of the Jupiter Yacht Club marina, with a decent chance of spotting a manatee along the way.
- Jupiter Yacht Club to Plaza Down Under. An 89-slip marina with small retail and dining, feeding into the covered event space tucked beneath the Indiantown Road Bridge.
- Harbourside Place, where the built path currently ends. Shopping, dining, the Wyndham on site, and the last stretch of paved Riverwalk heading north.
- The new bridge connection, near Inlet Village and Love Street. Not physically joined to the rest of the paved trail yet, but walkable and bikeable on its own, with Charlie & Joe's and the rest of the Love Street cluster now reachable without crossing US-1 at street level.
That last piece is genuinely new. Treat it as its own outing rather than an extension of the same walk you've done for years, because right now that's what it is.
Last weekend's crowd at Double Roads Tavern's second anniversary party was a reminder that none of this waits on construction schedules. People were already out walking and biking through the corridor the way they always have, bridge or no bridge, and that's really the point. Jupiter's daily map moves in small, specific increments, not press-release moments, and this year's increment is a walkway under a highway bridge that didn't used to let you through at all.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these changes because you live here and the Riverwalk is part of your week, keep an eye on how the town frames the inlet-side phase going forward. It's the one piece of this project that's still just a line on a plan.
For anyone with questions about how a specific stretch of Jupiter, or the towns around it, actually functions day to day, Helen Bassie is always glad to talk through it, no obligation attached.
