If you've driven Valleyheart Drive near Huston Street, you've probably passed a small stone marker under a stand of pines without giving it a second look. It sits at the entrance to a stretch of the Los Angeles River known as Ernie's Walk, a 0.3-mile path that most Sherman Oaks residents have never formally visited even though plenty of them walk their dogs past it every week. It runs alongside a weir dam that regulates water flow, and on a quiet morning you'll likely spot an egret or a heron working the shallows. It's dog-friendly, it's free, and it's been there for years.
Meanwhile, the region's much larger, much more publicized river path project, the one that shows up in local news headlines every time its budget grows or its timeline slips, still doesn't have a construction date. That gap between the small thing that already exists and the big thing that keeps getting delayed says something real about how Sherman Oaks gets its public space: usually the neighborhood builds it first, then waits for the county to catch up.
A Trail Most People Drive Past
Ernie's Walk is named for Ernie La Mere, a local resident who led one of the earliest efforts to reclaim this stretch of the river for public use. The path itself is short, entering near the intersection of Huston Street and Valleyheart Drive and running downstream toward Cedros Avenue before a locked county gate turns walkers back. There's no river bike path through this exact segment, so it's a walking and jogging route, not a cycling one. Street parking on Huston or Valleyheart is easy to find, which is part of why it's stayed a quiet, low-key spot rather than a destination people plan trips around. It's the kind of place you find because you live nearby, not because you searched for it.
Built by the Neighborhood, Not the City
The reason any of this river frontage looks the way it does traces back to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, which hit Sherman Oaks and Studio City especially hard. In the aftermath, one resident along Valleyheart Drive South near Longridge Avenue started clearing debris and planting on the riverbank without waiting for a city program to do it. Neighbors joined in, and what started as informal cleanup eventually became The Village Gardeners, a registered nonprofit that still maintains this stretch today as part of Los Angeles County's Adopt-a-River Program.
The group picked up trash, pulled invasive plants, and replanted the bank with "whatever would grow," according to co-founder Annette Fuller.
That volunteer effort went dormant for a while and then picked back up in 2007, and it's still active now, with organized cleanup days and ongoing planting along the Valleyheart Riverwalk. The point isn't just that the greenery looks nice. It's that the most walkable piece of river frontage in this part of the Valley exists because residents decided not to wait for a government agency to fund it.
Two Banks, Two Approaches
Head east from Ernie's Walk toward Fulton Avenue and Valleyheart Drive and you'll reach the Richard Lillard Outdoor Classroom, a shady park with interpretive displays, an outdoor amphitheater, and native riparian landscaping that spans several blocks along the river's edge. The park is named for Richard Lillard, the author of Eden in Jeopardy and one of the people who helped stop Mulholland Drive from being converted into a freeway decades ago. It sits right at the boundary where Sherman Oaks meets Studio City, and it's been informally used for dog walking and jogging by the surrounding neighborhood for years, long before anyone put up an official sign.
What makes this stretch worth noticing isn't just the amenities, it's the contrast between the two riverbanks. One side reflects the state's formal park-building approach, with the amphitheater and interpretive panels on river history and flooding in the San Fernando Valley. The other side is the community's version, planted and maintained by hand through the Village Gardeners' ongoing work. From the classroom, trails on both banks run roughly 1.1 miles east to Coldwater Canyon Avenue, so a round trip along either side comes to about 2.2 miles, passing sycamores, a few benches, and an interpretive sign nicknamed "the oak tree hotel" that explains how many species one mature oak can support.
The Billion-Dollar Path Still Waiting on a Vote
Now compare that to the project Los Angeles County has actually been promising for a decade. In 2016, voters approved Measure M, a countywide sales tax increase that included funding for an eight-mile, $365 million bike path along the LA River meant to close existing gaps and eventually stitch together a continuous 32-mile corridor stretching from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach. Nearly ten years later, that path still doesn't exist, and its budget has climbed past $1 billion.
Metro released the project's Draft Environmental Impact Report on December 18, 2025, and held a public comment period that closed on February 2, 2026. The next step is a vote on a Locally Preferred Alternative, which Metro's board is expected to take up sometime this fall. After that, a Final EIR is projected for 2026 or 2027. The project was originally positioned as one of the "28 by '28" initiatives meant to be finished before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, but Metro officials have acknowledged that timeline is no longer realistic, with some now hoping only to break ground before the Games rather than complete any full segment, according to reporting from SFGate. You can track the project's status directly through Metro's own project page.
None of that is a knock on the ambition. A continuous 32-mile path would genuinely change how this part of Los Angeles moves. But it's worth sitting with the timeline: a resident-led planting effort that started with one person after an earthquake in 1994 has been open and usable for years, while a billion-dollar, voter-funded infrastructure project approved in 2016 is still working through environmental review in 2026.
The Smaller Plan That Might Actually Move First
There's a more modest project in motion that's worth watching precisely because of its scale. In January 2026, the Studio City Neighborhood Council shared that the LA Bureau of Engineering is applying for grant funding to build a new off-street bike path along the river between Woodman Avenue and Coldwater Canyon Avenue, which would run directly through the Sherman Oaks and Studio City stretch discussed here. LADOT is also weighing new connector bikeways along Hazeltine Avenue, Fulton Avenue, or Ethel Avenue to link that path into the surrounding street grid, and residents were asked to weigh in on which corridor they'd prefer.
This is the detail that matters if you actually live along this stretch of the river: there's still no dedicated bike lane through this part of the Sherman Oaks and Studio City riverbank, and this proposal is aimed squarely at that gap. Smaller, neighborhood-scoped projects like this one tend to move through the city's process faster than a countywide flagship project with a billion-dollar price tag and a multi-year environmental review attached to it. If a bike path does show up here before Metro's larger path breaks ground anywhere nearby, it won't be a surprise.
How to Actually Walk It This Weekend
If you want to see any of this in person, here's the practical version:
- Ernie's Walk: Exit the 101 at Van Nuys Boulevard, head north one block, turn left onto Huston Street, and look for the stone marker where Huston meets Valleyheart Drive. Street parking is available on either street. Enter near Kester Avenue and walk downstream until you hit the locked gate past Cedros Avenue, then turn back.
- Richard Lillard Outdoor Classroom: Located at Valleyheart Drive and Longridge Avenue. From here, trails run about 1.1 miles east to Coldwater Canyon Avenue on both banks, making for a 2.2-mile round trip past the oak tree interpretive sign and a sycamore-lined path on the northern bank.
- Best time to go: Early morning is best for spotting egrets and herons near the weir, and it's noticeably quieter before the day heats up.
- What to expect: This is a walking and jogging route right now, not a cycling one. Bring your dog. Don't expect crowds.
The Takeaway
The lesson here isn't really about a river path. It's about how this specific neighborhood tends to get things done. Sherman Oaks residents didn't wait for a ballot measure or an environmental impact report to reclaim their stretch of the river. They picked up trash after an earthquake and kept showing up for more than thirty years. The county's bigger promises are still worth watching, especially the smaller Woodman-to-Coldwater Canyon proposal that could put a real bike path through this exact corridor. But the version you can actually use is already open, and it has been for longer than most of the headlines about the bigger one.
If walking this stretch of the river makes you look at your own block a little differently, or you're simply curious what a home near this part of the Valley is actually worth in today's market, Mario Acosta puts together free home valuations for exactly that kind of curiosity, no pressure attached.
