The city of Brookhaven officially opened the first mile of the Peachtree Creek Greenway on Thursday. It’s the initial piece of what’s intended to be a 12-mile paved trail, linking Doraville, Chamblee and Brookhaven to Atlanta and the BeltLine.

The idea for the trail goes back 20 years, to a DeKalb County and PATH Foundation plan for a network of paths.

After all that time, Betsy Eggers, board chair of Peachtree Creek Greenway Inc., a group that advocates for the trail, said she’s excited to see the first mile completed.

“People didn’t even know there was a North Fork of Peachtree Creek,” she said. “They didn’t even know there was a Peachtree Creek.”

The creek is a tributary to the Chattahoochee River. The North Fork runs along Interstate 85 in DeKalb County, and that’s where the trail is planned, eventually connecting job centers near the interstate with Buford Highway neighborhoods and to the BeltLine near Lindbergh.

The opening section, or “model mile,” of the trail will cover 1.2 miles, from Briarwood Road to North Druid Hills Road. Eggers said there are three trailheads with parking along that section: at North Druid Hills Road at the Salvation Army, Corporate Boulevard at the Salvation Army, and off of Briarwood Road between the Northeast Expressway and Buford Highway.

Brookhaven is paying for this initial piece of the paved trail and has another two miles of trail planned.