Exploring Sherwood Parks: Lake Cherrywood and Neighborhood Options

Lake Cherrywood is one of Sherwood's parks, and the city completed a two-phase renovation there last year. A new playground opened with a ribbon-cutting last September. The park offers one starting point for exploring the city's other parks and walking options.

Lake Cherrywood is a destination park, while other Sherwood parks offer smaller, closer-to-home options. The parks differ in amenities and distance, so it can help to know what each offers when choosing a place for an outing or a regular walk.

Lake Cherrywood Got the Ribbon-Cutting

The improvements are real and worth knowing about if you haven't been out there recently. The city used a $210,000 grant from the Arkansas Outdoor Recreation Grant Program to convert the park's basketball court into an all-accessible facility, adding lighting, fencing, and shaded bleachers. That work also brought accessible restrooms, a water-filling station, resurfaced parking with expanded disability spaces, and an accessible picnic area.

Then, on September 19, 2025, the city held a ribbon-cutting for a new playground at the park's East Shore Drive entrance: a tree-house-themed structure with zip lines, designed to be usable by kids of all abilities. It's a genuinely different kind of playground than anything else in the city's park system, and it's the piece that finally gave Cherrywood a reason to be a full-family stop instead of just a fishing spot with a basketball court.

If you haven't taken kids there since before last September, it's a different park now. If fishing is the draw, the lake is stocked by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and pulls in largemouth bass, crappie, and catfish, with bank fishing, a pier, and boat access all still in place alongside the new amenities.

Planning a Visit to Lake Cherrywood

Cherrywood offers a destination outing for the playground and lake. For a regular walk, a smaller park closer to home may be more convenient.

Neighborhood Parks and Walking Trails

Sherwood also has smaller parks with trails and amenities near the neighborhoods they serve. The parks below offer a range of nearby options for walking and recreation.

• Storer Park, at the end of Helen Drive or Johnny Lane off West Lee, has a quarter-mile paved trail, a playground, and shade for most of the day. Street parking only, no lot, which tells you it was built for the people who live around it and not for anyone driving in.
• Austin Lake Park, on Austin Lakes Circle, runs a 1,600-foot paved trail, roughly a third of a mile, through a densely shaded lot with two pavilions and a playground. It's the park most often mentioned by families in that neighborhood for the simple reason that the sidewalks connecting to it make it walkable without ever touching a car.
• Henson Park has the longest trail of the group at 1.3 miles, more than five times the length of Storer's loop, following a creek through the park with a tennis court and picnic area along the way. If you want an actual workout instead of a stroll, this is the one on the list built for it.
• Thornhill Park, at 2201 Thornhill Drive, pairs a half-mile walking trail with a seasonal public pool, picnic tables, and a fishing pond stocked with catfish in summer and trout in winter by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. It also has a landmark none of the other parks can claim: a vintage Union Pacific caboose sitting trackside, which makes it an easy meeting spot to describe to someone who's never been.

For residents within walking distance, these parks offer nearby places to walk or spend time outdoors. They provide options for a different kind of visit from the destination parks elsewhere in the city.

The Dog Park Is Its Own Trip

Sherwood Dog Park deserves a category of its own because it isn't something you stumble into on a walk. It's a fenced, 11,000-square-foot facility split into two sections, one for dogs under 25 pounds and one for larger dogs, partly shaded, open sunrise to sunset. Unlike Storer or Henson, this is a park you drive to on purpose, the way you'd drive to Cherrywood for the playground. It's worth knowing it exists as a standalone stop rather than assuming it's part of a bigger park you'll pass through.

Picking the One That's Actually Yours

Each park offers a different kind of visit. Cherrywood has the new playground and lake, Sherwood Dog Park is a stop for dogs, and Thornhill has a pool and pond in season. Storer is near West Lee, Austin Lake connects to that neighborhood's sidewalk network, and Henson offers a longer loop a few minutes' drive away.

Cherrywood's new playground is worth a visit, especially if you have young kids who haven't tried the zip lines yet. Sherwood also has smaller parks with walkable options, and the right choice for an outing depends on which amenities and routes are closest to you.

If you're weighing a move to a specific pocket of Sherwood and want to know which park, school route, or walking loop actually sits closest to a house you're considering, that's the kind of local detail worth asking about before you make an offer. Caleigh Dumas works Cabot, Sherwood, Searcy, and the rest of Central Arkansas every day and can walk you through what a specific address actually puts you near. Let's Connect.