"When it's quiet out there, the wildlife is really out about," says Brent Walker, Sandy Springs' Director of Recreation and Parks, describing an early morning walk along the boardwalk at Morgan Falls Overlook Park. Otters in the water. Herons standing still in the shallows. Mist lifting off Orkin Lake before the day gets hot.
That description still holds. Almost everything else about how you actually use the park has changed in the past two years, and a surprising number of guides, including some published this year, are still describing an operation that no longer exists.
The Paddle Shack Switched Operators in 2024
If you rented a kayak or a paddleboard at Morgan Falls anytime before 2024, you were dealing with High Country Outfitters, which had run the concession since 2011. That ended when the City of Sandy Springs awarded a new five-year contract to Murph's Surf, a company that started as a single kayak and paddleboard rented out of a garage in 2015 and has since grown into a multi-state operation.
The contract terms are public record and worth knowing if you've wondered why prices at the Paddle Shack look the way they do. Murph's Surf pays the city $20,100 a year in rent plus 10 percent of its annual gross profit. During the council vote, a member raised the obvious concern about handing one vendor sole rights to the only launch point on Bull Sluice Lake. The city's answer was that Murph's Surf submitted pricing already in line with market norms, and that if rates ever got out of hand, paddlers would simply take their business elsewhere on the river.
A few seasons in, the shop runs weekends starting in April, then daily from May through October. Rentals cover kayaks and stand-up paddleboards for any experience level, and weekend SUP yoga classes are now part of the regular schedule. If your mental map of Morgan Falls still says "High Country," update it. The name on the shed changed, and so did the ownership structure behind it.
The Race Also Got a New Name and a New Host
For years, the marquee paddling event at Morgan Falls was Stand-Up for the Hooch, a vendor-run race drawing competitors for a two-mile or six-mile course. With the concession contract gone, that race effectively went with it.
In its place, the City of Sandy Springs is hosting its own inaugural event this weekend. The Sandy Springs SUP Showdown runs Saturday, August 15, a six-mile out-and-back course across Bull Sluice Lake and the Chattahoochee, presented in partnership with Murph's Surf and with Catalyst Sports supporting adaptive kayak athletes. This is not a rebrand of the old race. It's the city itself stepping in to formalize what had previously been a private vendor's event, which is a meaningfully different arrangement if you're weighing whether to sign up, sponsor, or just show up to watch from the overlook deck.
Here's the shift in one view:
| Through 2023 | 2024 and after | |
|---|---|---|
| Paddle Shack operator | High Country Outfitters, running since 2011 | Murph's Surf, five-year contract awarded 2024 |
| Signature paddle race | Stand-Up for the Hooch, vendor-hosted | Sandy Springs SUP Showdown, city-hosted, first run August 15, 2026 |
| Trail access from Roswell Road | Drive-in only | Springway Trail Segment 2A, a paved 1.88-mile path with an Orkin Lake boardwalk, open since May 2025 |
The Trail That Finally Connects to It
The third piece of this is the Springway Trail, and it's the one that actually changes how residents reach the park in the first place. Segment 2A opened May 2, 2025, an 8-to-12-foot paved, ADA-compliant path running 1.88 miles from Roswell Road at Cimarron Parkway to the Morgan Falls entrance, crossing Orkin Lake on a raised boardwalk. The Sandy Springs Conservancy put up the $30,000 in community match funds required to secure a $3 million Georgia Outdoor Stewardship grant, and total construction landed at $8.5 million, partly because the city didn't know there was bedrock under Orkin Lake until construction had already started.
What this segment gets you is real: a way to walk or bike from the Roswell Road corridor straight into the park without touching a car. What it is not is a finished loop. Segment 2A is one piece of a planned 5.4-mile loop around Morgan Falls that will eventually connect to Big Trees Forest Preserve, and that loop itself is one piece of the city's much larger Springway Trail Plan, a 31.4-mile system meant to eventually link a dozen schools, fifteen parks, and three MARTA stations. As of February 2026, the city had shifted its funding focus to the next stretch, a segment estimated at $14.5 million that is still working through design and grant applications. If you're picturing a completed loop around the park this year, that picture is a few funding cycles ahead of where things actually stand.
Why So Many Guides Still Get This Wrong
Part of the reason outdated information keeps circulating is that a lot of it comes from evergreen visitor content that gets a fresh publish date without a fresh fact check. Articles carrying 2026 dates still reference "the High Country Paddle Shack" and "Stand-Up for the Hooch" by name, more than two years after the city switched operators. None of that is malicious. It's just how tourism copy tends to age: the seasonal advice about mornings and mist stays evergreen, while the operational details underneath it quietly go stale.
For a resident planning a Saturday, the gap matters. Knowing which company holds the rental contract tells you who to call about pricing or availability. Knowing the race changed hosts tells you where to actually register. Knowing exactly how much of the promised trail system is built versus funded versus still on a wish list tells you whether that quiet, car-free walk to the park is something you can do today or something you're waiting on.
What Else Lines Up With the Season
The rest of the neighborhood's calendar is worth knowing alongside all this. City Green's free Friday night concert series runs through the end of August, and the Sandy Springs Farmers Market keeps its usual Saturday morning hours, 8:30 to noon at City Springs, with a Dog Days of Summer edition bringing the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile through for a photo stop this season. Looking further out, the Blue Stone Arts and Music Festival returns for its fourth year September 25 and 26, a free two-day event with more than 60 artists and live music that's become one of the more anticipated dates on the fall calendar.
For dinner after a day on the water, Rumi's Kitchen reopened its flagship Sandy Springs location in March after a renovation that started at a planned $3.5 million and nearly tripled by the time it was finished, timed to the restaurant's 20th anniversary. The updated space includes a 22-seat curved marble bar and a private dining room with a mural by artist Dean Barger, a considerable step up from the original footprint that owner-chef Ali Mesghali says had outgrown its kitchen years ago.
None of these changes require a special occasion. They're just the current state of a neighborhood that keeps quietly rebuilding its own infrastructure and habits in ways that don't always make it into the write-ups.
The Takeaway for Anyone Already Living This Routine
Morgan Falls Overlook Park still delivers the same early morning stillness it always has. But the mechanics underneath that experience, who runs the rental shop, what the signature race is called and who's hosting it, how much of the promised trail network is actually walkable today, have all shifted in the past two years. If your plans for this weekend or this season are built on information from a few summers ago, it's worth a quick check before you go.
Staying current on details like these is part of what it means to actually know a neighborhood rather than just describe it. Engel & Völkers Atlanta keeps a close eye on Sandy Springs beyond the market reports, because the small civic and commercial shifts, a new vendor here, a new trail segment there, are usually the first sign of where a place is headed next. If you're curious what else has changed around your corner of Sandy Springs, connect with an EV Advisor.
