The compass Clinton
Nine markers set in concrete, six courses, eight legs each, and a worksheet to print before you go
The orienteering course, and the hundred metre marker you calibrate yourself against.
Heritage Park at 1300 North 1000 West lists five amenities on the city's own facility record and the fifth is an orienteering course. It is not a figure of speech. Nine orange and white markers are set in concrete in that park, stamped HPOC, one of them a hundred metre marker used to work out your own pace count. Six courses run off them, two easy, two intermediate and two advanced, eight legs each, every leg published as a magnetic bearing and a distance. The city hosts four documents to go with it, and all four were current when checked in August 2026.
Clinton is at the top corner of Davis County, four hours and a mountain range from the ground I actually work, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was read where it is issued: the city's own facility records, history page, secondary water page, special events calendar and fire department pages at clintoncity.net, including its published insurance classification and the four orienteering course documents it hosts; the Utah State Historical Society's account of the town; the state roads layer and the municipal boundary layer at the Utah Geospatial Resource Center; the United States Census geocoder; and the Division of Wildlife Resources community fisheries list. Every figure carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent takes the ground level work.
The live question
There is a permanent orienteering course in a neighbourhood park here, and it comes with a worksheet.
Heritage Park at 1300 North 1000 West lists five amenities on its own city facility record: boweries, a playground, restrooms, water, and an orienteering course. The fifth one is not a figure of speech. There are nine control points in that park, orange and white markers set in concrete in the ground, each stamped HPOC for Heritage Park Orienteering Course, and the city hosts four documents to go with them: a course summary, a course worksheet, a course map and a course key. All four were current when checked in August 2026.
One of the nine markers is not a control point in the ordinary sense. It is a hundred metre marker, and the summary explains what it is for: it sits 260 degrees magnetic from control point A, and you walk to it and back counting every other step each way, average the two counts and use that as your pace multiplier for every course. The city even prints the arithmetic. If your pace count is 67 and the leg is 72 metres, you walk 0.67 times 72, which is 48 steps. A municipal web page teaching people to calibrate their own stride is not a thing you find twice.
There are six courses, not one. Two easy, two intermediate and two advanced, rated by the city on terrain and distance, and every one of them starts and ends at control point A, which is beside the sign in the northeast corner of the park. Each course is eight legs long and each leg is published as a magnetic bearing and a distance in metres. The course is meant to be run with a compass, and the city puts the control point coordinates in decimal degrees on the documents so anybody who would rather convert it to a satellite exercise can.
The course, in numbers
9
control points, set in concrete and stamped HPOC
6
courses, two easy, two intermediate, two advanced
8
legs on every one of the six
4
documents the city hosts, and you want all of them
The record
Six courses, eight legs each, and every bearing and distance published in advance.
This is what the city's own course worksheet contains, checked in August 2026. Every course is eight legs, every leg is a magnetic bearing and a distance in metres, and every course starts and finishes at the same marker. The totals in the last column are this page's addition of the city's published leg distances rather than figures the city prints.
| Course | Rated | Shortest and longest leg | The eight legs add up to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Course 1 | Easy | 31 metres and 120 metres | About 594 metres |
| Course 2 | Easy | 31 metres and 93 metres | About 543 metres, the shortest of the six |
| Course 3 | Intermediate | 49 metres and 112 metres | About 586 metres |
| Course 4 | Intermediate | 31 metres and 133 metres | About 582 metres |
| Course 5 | Advanced | 41 metres and 115 metres | About 645 metres |
| Course 6 | Advanced | 64 metres and 142 metres | About 742 metres, the longest of the six |
Taken from the city's own course worksheet and course key, both downloaded on 20 August 2026 from the Heritage Park facility record. The city rates the six courses on terrain and on the objects you have to work around rather than on distance alone, which is why the two advanced courses are not simply the two longest. The totals are this page's arithmetic on the published leg lengths and are given as approximations for that reason; the city publishes each leg and no course total. Every course begins and ends at control point A, which the documents place beside the sign in the northeast section of the park.
The pace count, which is the part that makes it a real course
Most park orienteering, where it exists at all, is a treasure hunt with a map. This one is not. The city's course summary opens by explaining that one of the nine markers is a hundred metre marker, that it sits at 260 degrees magnetic from control point A, and that the first thing you do is walk to it and back from A, counting every other step in each direction, then average the two counts. That average is your pace count, and it is the multiplier you use for the rest of the day.
The summary then works an example, in the city's own arithmetic: if your pace count is 67 and the distance is 72, you do 0.67 times 72, which is 48, so you walk 48 steps counting every other step for 72 metres. That is standard land navigation practice written out plainly on a municipal facility page, and it means the course teaches the method rather than assuming it.
The rest follows from that. Take a bearing, count your paces, look for an orange and white marker set in concrete with HPOC on it, write down the letter, take the next bearing. Eight legs, back to A, and the course key tells you how you did. The city's documents describe no timing, no supervision, no booking and no scoring beyond the key, so none of that appears here.
The details
Getting there
From City Hall the run is south on 1500 West to 1300 North, then west to the 1000 West alignment; the park sits on the corner. Heritage Park is one of three city parks strung along 1000 West, with Veterans Park at 1705 North and Trail Side Park at 2300 North, so it is easy to arrive at the wrong one. Print the worksheet before you leave, because the city hosts it as a document rather than posting the leg tables on any sign in the park.
Before you go
- Bring a compass. Every leg is published as a magnetic bearing, and although the documents also carry decimal degree coordinates, the course was built to be walked with a needle.
- Print the worksheet and the key separately and do not look at the key first. The worksheet has blank letter boxes for a reason.
- Do the hundred metre calibration walk before anything else. Without a pace count of your own the distances are unusable, and it is the first thing the city's summary tells you to do.
- The markers are in concrete at ground level, orange and white, with HPOC on them. They are not on posts and they are not signposted from the park entrance.
The documents
Four files on a city website, and one of them gives a coordinate two different ways.
The four documents are linked from the park's facility record and each does a different job. The course summary is the instruction sheet: what the markers are, what HPOC stands for, how to calibrate a pace count off the hundred metre marker, and the note that the course is meant to be run by compass. The course worksheet is the one to print, carrying all six courses as tables of bearing, distance and a blank box for the letter you find. The course map shows the layout. And the course key is the worksheet again with the answers filled in.
The control points themselves are lettered A to H, and the city publishes a coordinate for each one plus the hundred metre marker. A is at 41.132493 north, 112.045657 west. The furthest west of them, G, is at 112.047114 west. The whole course therefore fits inside roughly 150 metres of longitude and about 120 metres of latitude, which is one neighbourhood park, and the courses get their length from crossing it repeatedly rather than from covering ground.
There is one small inconsistency between the two documents and it is worth recording rather than tidying away. On the worksheet, every control point coordinate is given in degrees, minutes and seconds with a decimal degree pair underneath it. On the key, control point C is given in a different notation entirely, in degrees and decimal minutes, and its decimal degree pair is missing. It is the only one of the nine that differs. Anybody converting the course to a satellite exercise should take C from the worksheet rather than the key.
The last thing worth saying about the documents is what they do not contain. There is no time limit, no scoring system beyond the key, no age guidance, no booking, no supervision and no fee anywhere in the four files. There is also no sign in the park carrying the leg tables, as far as the published record shows, which is why the summary tells you to find the documents on the park page first. It is a free, unsupervised, permanent, self service facility, and that is unusual enough on its own.
Nine markers in concrete, six courses, eight legs each, a pace count you calibrate yourself, and four PDFs on a city website. Nobody has written this down before.
The hill
A third party directory says there is a sledding hill here and the city's own record does not.
This park turns up in circulation attached to a second claim, and it needs handling honestly because the claim is plausible. A third party parks directory carries an entry titled for a sledding hill at Heritage Park. That is the only source for it anybody has found. The city's own facility record for this park lists five features, and a sledding hill is not among them, and no page on the city site, checked in August 2026, mentions sledding, a hill, or winter use of any park at all.
The terrain does not settle it either way, though it does explain why the claim exists. The federal geographic names records put the Clinton City Cemetery at 4,478 feet in the southeast quadrant of the city and West Clinton Elementary School at 4,298 feet on the west side, so the ground falls about 180 feet from one end to the other and Heritage Park sits in the older, higher half. A local high point at 1300 North and 1000 West is entirely consistent with that. Consistent is not the same as evidenced.
So the honest version, and the only one that goes on this page, is that the city does not list a sledding hill among this park's amenities and a third party parks directory does. One call to the recreation department on 801-614-0780 would settle it in either direction. Until somebody makes it, nobody should describe a municipal sledding facility here in the city's voice, and this companion does not.
This is the second time the same species of claim has failed against this city's facility system. The other is the splash pad, which the practical city guide on this site says runs in summer and which appears on none of the fifteen numbered facility records. Both are honest inferences that somebody made once and everybody has copied since, and the check in both cases is the same fifteen web pages. The June week page carries the splash pad finding, because the city's own celebration is where it shows up.
Nothing in the city's four documents describes supervision, a time limit or an age guideline, and the markers are at ground level in an ordinary residential park. This is a free, permanent, unsupervised, self service facility in a neighbourhood park with a playground, restrooms and rentable pavilions, and it should be treated as exactly that. The control points are orange and white markers set in concrete flush with the ground rather than on posts, they are not signposted from the entrance, and the leg tables exist only in documents you download before you arrive. The park's own five published amenities are the whole of what the city says is there, so anybody expecting a course centre, a start box, a timer or a hire counter will not find one. And the sledding hill in circulation is a third party directory's, not the city's; if that is why you were going, ring the recreation department first.
Living with it
A free, permanent, unsupervised course that will still be there in fifteen years because it is set in concrete.
For a household in the older southeast half of the city, this is a genuinely good amenity and an unusually durable one. Nine markers set in concrete do not get vandalised, stolen, seasonally removed or defunded in the way that equipment does, and the six courses live in four documents on a website rather than in anybody's budget line. It costs nothing to run and nothing to use, and it will very likely outlast most of the playgrounds in the city.
It also does something for a flat, fully built suburb that is hard to do any other way, which is to make a small park interesting more than once. Six courses of eight legs each, in one park, at three difficulties, is a facility you can come back to twenty times. The whole thing fits inside about 150 metres of ground and gets its length by crossing that ground repeatedly, which is precisely the design decision that makes it repeatable.
Heritage Park is also one of the five parks in the city with a rentable pavilion, at $30 for a five hour block in one of two time slots, bookable at the recreation department from the first working day of the year for a season that runs 15 April to 15 October. So a household can book the pavilion and set six courses of navigation running from it on the same afternoon for thirty dollars. The paths page carries the rest of the parks system and the seven measured loops.
What this page deliberately does not do is turn into a county comparison. The Davis County family page prices and seasons the paid and free days out across all fifteen cities and is where this sits alongside the alternatives; there is also a much better known orienteering course at a nature park in the next city west, and that one belongs to the county lakeside parks page, which carries it in full. This page is about the one in Clinton.
The rest of the system
The Rail Trail and the Canal
Eleven named sites, seven measured loops and a dog ordinance that names three places its own page does not.
Read the guideWhat else is free
Family weekends in Davis County
The county's days out priced and seasoned in one place, with the free ones listed first.
Read the guideThe other free hour
The Clinton Pond
A managed basin at the low corner of town with 2,900 feet of flat path around it.
Read the guideMoving here
Moving to Clinton
The bills, the routes, the services and the three things only the address can answer.
The mover pageThe practical side
The Clinton city guide
Where the figures live, and the live listings that go with them.
Open the guideThe wider county
Davis County on The Local
Every town on this run of the valley, and the seven subjects written once for all of them.
The region hubKeep reading
The rest of Clinton on The Local.
The founding
The Summit That Became Clinton
Four working names, a ward in 1896, a railroad split in 1916, ninety years in August.
Read the guideThe address
Whose Address Is This
All 1,264 road segments carry another city's grid, another city's ZIP, another post.
Read the guideThe big week
Six Days in June
Six days, five venues, and a free swim night the city has to hold in another county.
Read the guideThe water
The Clinton Pond
A storm detention basin fed by a mile of pipe, aerated on purpose, sampled by the county.
Read the guideThe paths
The Rail Trail and the Canal
Two named trails, seven measured loops, and an 1884 canal that still bills separately.
Read the guideMoving here
Moving to Clinton
Two water bills, two state routes, no freeway inside the line, one street of offices.
Read the guideThe companion
Clinton, in full
Ninety years old, on a neighbour's street grid, with its founding farm in the next town.
Read the pageQuick answers
The course, answered.
Yes, and the city lists it as an amenity. Heritage Park at 1300 North 1000 West publishes five features on its own city facility record: boweries, a playground, restrooms, water, and an orienteering course. The course consists of nine control points, which the city describes as orange and white markers set in concrete on the ground, each stamped HPOC for Heritage Park Orienteering Course. Four documents accompany it on the same page, a course summary, a course worksheet, a course map and a course key, and all four were current when checked in August 2026.
Six, at three difficulties. The city's own worksheet publishes two easy, two intermediate and two advanced courses, rated on terrain and on the objects you have to work around rather than on distance alone. Every one of the six is eight legs long, every leg is given as a magnetic bearing and a distance in metres, and all six start and finish at control point A beside the course sign in the northeast section of the park. Adding the city's published leg distances gives totals from about 543 metres for the shortest to about 742 for the longest, though the city itself publishes no course totals.
Working out your own pace count, and the city explains it on the course summary. One of the nine markers is a hundred metre marker sitting at 260 degrees magnetic from control point A. You walk from A to it and back, counting every other step in each direction, then average the two counts. That average is your multiplier for every leg on every course. The city works the arithmetic through on the page: if your pace count is 67 and the leg is 72 metres, you do 0.67 times 72, which is 48, so you take 48 counted steps. It is standard land navigation practice, written out for anybody.
The city says the course is meant to be run by compass, and every leg is published as a magnetic bearing, so yes if you want to do it as intended. The documents also carry the control point locations in decimal degrees, and the summary notes that you can use those coordinates and the key to convert any of the courses into a satellite navigation exercise if you would rather. One caution if you do: control point C is written in a different notation on the key from the one used on the worksheet, and its decimal degree pair is missing there, so take C from the worksheet.
Nothing. There is no fee, no booking, no permit and no registration of any kind, and the city publishes no opening or closing time for this or any of its parks. The four documents are free to download from the park's facility record. The only priced thing at Heritage Park is a bowery, at $30 for a five hour block in one of two time slots, bookable at the recreation department from the first working day of the calendar year for a season that runs 15 April through 15 October. That is an annual figure and it moves.
About an hour for one course, and longer the first time. The pace count calibration alone is a walk out to the hundred metre marker and back before you start, and the summary tells you to do it first. The whole course sits inside roughly 150 metres of longitude and about 120 metres of latitude, which is a single neighbourhood park, so the eight legs get their length by crossing the same ground repeatedly rather than by covering distance. That also makes it a facility you can return to, because six different routes run over the same small piece of park.
The city does not list one. Heritage Park's own facility record publishes five features and a sledding hill is not among them, and no page on the city site, checked in August 2026, mentions sledding, a hill or winter use of any park at all. A third party parks directory carries an entry titled for a sledding hill here, and that is the only source anybody has found. The terrain makes the claim plausible, because the city falls about 180 feet from the cemetery corner to its west end and this park is in the higher half, but plausible is not evidence. One call to 801-614-0780 settles it.
At control point A, beside the course sign, in the northeast section of Heritage Park. The city's own documents put A at latitude 41.132493 north and longitude 112.045657 west. Every one of the six courses starts and ends there, and the hundred metre calibration marker sits at 260 degrees magnetic from it. The markers are set in concrete flush with the ground rather than mounted on posts, they carry HPOC on them, and they are not signposted from the park entrance, so the sensible order is to download the worksheet first and find A second.
The summary is the instruction sheet, covering the markers, the HPOC stamp, the pace count method and the note that the course is meant to be run by compass. The worksheet is the one to print, carrying all six courses as tables of bearing, distance and a blank box for the letter you find. The map shows the layout. The key is the worksheet again with the answers filled in, so it is the one not to read first. None of the four describes a time limit, supervision, booking, scoring beyond the key, or an age guideline, so none of that appears anywhere on this page.
Nine markers in concrete and six ways to walk the same small park.
This is the single most unusual thing in Clinton and almost nobody who lives here knows it is there, which is a fair summary of the city generally. It is free, it is permanent, it needs a compass and a printed sheet and nothing else, and it will still be there in fifteen years because the markers are set in concrete and the courses live in four files rather than in a budget. If you are weighing a street in the older southeast half of the city, this park is worth an hour before you decide anything, and it is the kind of amenity that does not appear on any listing. Tell me what you are looking at and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who works this end of the county, and stay on the file for the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.