The south end: the Jordan River handoff and Center Street
Mile 0 where one county's trail becomes the next one's, under the interstate
The Legacy Parkway Trail begins where the Jordan River Parkway Trail ends, at the I-215 underpass on the Salt Lake City line, and the changeover is seamless enough that most riders only notice it because the road beside them changes name. About a mile north, the Center Street trailhead at 1100 West Center Street in North Salt Lake is the first signed lot on the Davis side, off-street parking and not much else, and for most people it is where the ride actually starts.
The join is the point of the whole corridor. Combined with the Jordan River trail to the south, the county's tourism office puts the continuous run at more than fifty miles, and the pair form the middle of the Golden Spoke, the connected paved network from Ogden to Provo whose first celebratory ride was June 2, 2018. From here the trail runs north with, in Farmington City's phrasing, no street crossings, which is the sentence that makes it a commuting route and not just a park path.
The details
Getting there
Park at the Center Street lot in North Salt Lake and ride south a mile to touch the county line, or north for the whole corridor; there is no water or restroom at this end.
Before you go
- Bring every drop of water you will want; the mid-corridor trailheads have none.
- North Salt Lake has no FrontRunner station; the nearest is Woods Cross at 750 S 800 W if you are riding one way and training back.
- The Salt Lake County side is its own page on The Local; this one takes the line at the underpass and runs north.
Foxboro North Regional Park
North Salt Lake the trailhead with a restroom, a tap and a splash pad
A mile and a half up, Foxboro North Regional Park at 1120 West 1100 North is the first stop that behaves like a park rather than a parking lot: restrooms, drinking water, a playground and a seasonal splash pad, sitting on the west side of the Foxboro neighborhood that grew up around this end of the parkway after 2008. Trail guides also call this access 2425 South, the Woods Cross grid name for the same lane, and one enthusiast source reports horse-trailer parking here, which if true is the corridor's clearest sign that riding is a permitted use.
It is the natural start for a family loop rather than a through ride: south to Center Street and back is a flat three miles with a splash pad at the end, north to Mountain View Park and back is two. The rule of the corridor is set here and never changes: no motors, dogs on leash, and the pavement wide enough that a stroller and two bikes pass without a word.
The details
Getting there
From I-15 or Legacy Parkway use the North Salt Lake exits to 1100 North and follow it west to the park; the trail runs along the park's west edge.
Before you go
- This and Mountain View are the two trailheads with water and a restroom; plan the ride around them.
- Trailhead names differ between guides, 2425 South and Foxboro North being the same lot; the county's map is the tiebreaker.
- The horse-trailer report is single-source; if you are hauling, call Davis County first rather than assume.
Mountain View Park
Woods Cross the second full-service stop, one mile on
A mile north of Foxboro, Mountain View Park in the Woods Cross area is the corridor's other trailhead with the full set, restrooms, water and a playground, and between them the two parks make the south end the easiest part of the trail to use with children. From here the corridor is at its most suburban: houses to the east, the parkway to the west, and the Wasatch behind everything, which is where the park got its name.
This is also the stretch where the trail's real function shows on a weekday morning. Woods Cross station is a short ride east, the parkway carries the cars, and the trail carries the people who would rather not be in them, north to Farmington or south into the Salt Lake system without a single stoplight. The next water after this is at Farmington Station, roughly ten miles up, and the trail does not warn you.
The details
Getting there
Reach the park from the Woods Cross city grid off 2600 South and Redwood Road; the trail runs beside it.
Before you go
- Fill bottles here or at Foxboro; the next reliable tap is at the north end.
- Woods Cross FrontRunner is at 750 S 800 W, close enough to make a one-way ride to Farmington and a train back a real plan.
- The 2024 repave and the 2026 widening are both road projects; the trail's own surface is asphalt and concrete and holds up.
Mill Creek trailhead and the Bountiful Pond spur
West Bountiful a bare lot, a spur under the parkway, and a pond under a health warning
Two miles north of Mountain View, the Mill Creek trailhead near 1100 West and 1200 North in West Bountiful is the first of the bare-bones lots: parking, no water, no restroom, and the corridor starting to open toward the wetlands. It is also where a spur peels off under the parkway to Bountiful Pond, less than a mile round trip, the county's second-busiest birding hotspot after Farmington Bay for gulls, terns, waterfowl and the songbirds and owls in the trees around it. Despite the name the pond sits in Woods Cross on 1600 North, not in Bountiful.
The pond is worth the detour for the birds and not, in 2026, for the water. Utah's Division of Water Quality has had a harmful algal bloom warning in effect there through the summer, most recently updated August 3, 2026, with the guidance that algae mats are present, that dogs and children stay out of the water, and that wading, paddling and fishing are still fine. Read the DEQ advisory page the week you go; the ponds themselves are the lakeside-parks page's subject, and this trail only lends them a spur.
The details
Getting there
Enter from West Bountiful's 1100 West or ride in on the trail; the pond spur is signed and passes under the highway.
Before you go
- No water, no restroom here or at the next two trailheads north; this is where the ride gets self-supported.
- The pond is under a DEQ algae warning as of August 2026: keep dogs and kids out of the water, and check the advisory before you plan a picnic there.
- Birders rank the pond second in the county; bring binoculars even if you came to ride.
Pages Lane and Birnam Woods
Centerville and West Bountiful two quiet trailheads a mile apart, then the trail changes sides
Pages Lane dead-ends west into a small trailhead half a mile past Mill Creek, in Centerville, and a mile past that the Birnam Woods trailhead in West Bountiful sits behind its subdivision off 830 West north of Porter Lane, with a small playground in the park behind the houses. Neither has water or a restroom, both have parking, and both are the trailheads locals use because nobody else does. This is also the stretch where the trail briefly shares its alignment with the Denver and Rio Grande Western Rail Trail in Centerville, the only place the two corridors overlap.
North of Birnam Woods the trail crosses under the parkway to the west side and the character changes for good: fields, wetland, the preserve opening to the west, and four and a half miles with no trailhead, no water and no restroom until Farmington. It is the best riding on the corridor and the least forgiving, and the honest advice is to treat Birnam Woods as the last door for a long way.
The details
Getting there
Both are reached from the city street grids west of I-15; Birnam Woods is signed from Porter Lane and the lot is behind the subdivision.
Before you go
- Last parking before the long empty stretch north; top off water in your bottles, not at a tap, because there is none.
- The rail-trail overlap in Centerville is short; the D&RGW trail is a separate corridor running roughly 24 miles north toward Roy, and it does not hand off at Farmington.
- Winter mornings hold ice in the underpass shade; the trail is not consistently plowed.
The Legacy Nature Preserve
West of the trail 2,225 acres you may look at and may not enter
The Legacy Nature Preserve is the reason the corridor exists in the form it does. When the parkway was litigated to a halt in the early 2000s, the 2005 settlement that let it be built required a trail system, banned billboards, held the speed limit to 55 and kept semi trucks off, and UDOT set aside 2,225 acres west of the highway plus twenty acres of wetland along its length as mitigation, managed on an adaptive plan that mimics natural flood and drawdown cycles across playas and grassland ponds. The figure that circulates on tourism sites, 2,100 acres, is wrong; 2,225 is the project record's number.
It is not open to the public. You see it from the trail and from a designated viewing area commonly given as 2100 West 500 South in Woods Cross, and what you see is mudflat, wet meadow, emergent marsh and open channels that hold Pacific Flyway migrants in spring and fall. It is not a wildlife management area and it is not run by the wildlife division; that is Farmington Bay next door, which is a different property with a different rulebook and its own page here.
The details
Getting there
Ride the trail's west-side stretch north of Birnam Woods, or drive to the Woods Cross viewing area; there is no gate into the preserve itself.
Before you go
- Look, do not enter; the preserve is closed to the public by design and managed for birds, not for visitors.
- Binoculars turn the empty miles into the best miles; the marsh reads as nothing at bike speed.
- The settlement's rules were partly sunset on January 1, 2020, when the speed limit went to 65 and the truck ban lapsed; the preserve and the trail were not.
Glovers Lane and the Farmington trailhead
Farmington the trailheads at the top of the empty stretch, and where the West Davis Highway begins
The long stretch ends at Farmington's trailheads: a dirt lot with nothing on it, then Farmington City's two Glovers Lane accesses, one at 925 South just north of the overpass and a Bus Park trailhead with parking at 425 West Glovers Lane beside the bus lot. Glovers Lane is also where the West Davis Highway begins, at I-15, running sixteen miles north and west to West Point since all its lanes opened on January 8, 2024, with nearly ten miles of new trail built alongside it that ties into this one. That is the corridor's real northern handoff, and it is newer and better documented than any older claim of a link to the rail trail.
Glovers Lane is also the road to Farmington Bay: the wildlife management area's front gate is a mile and a half west of the overpass, and the Eccles Wildlife Education Center is a little past it. A ride to the bay from the trail is a plausible morning, with the permit rules that page explains; the trail itself carries no permit at all.
The details
Getting there
From I-15 exit 322 take Glovers Lane west over the interstate; the trailheads are signed on both sides of the overpass.
Before you go
- The West Davis Highway trail is roughly ten miles, not sixteen; the highway is sixteen, and the two numbers get merged.
- Farmington Bay's front gate is west along Glovers Lane; the wildlife area needs a permit or a license for adults, the trail does not.
- The Farmington Creek Trail's paved lot off West Glovers Lane sits close enough to walk between the two systems.
Farmington Station and the north end
Mile 13 the trailhead in the train station lot, steps from Station Park
The trail's north trailhead sits in the northeast corner of the Farmington FrontRunner station lot at 450 North 850 West, and the pavement runs about a third of a mile beyond it and stops. Station Park, the county's largest shopping and dining center, is the development on the same station, so the corridor that started at a river underpass ends at a train platform with a fountain show behind it, which is about as complete a car-free commuting statement as a suburb makes.
The length that follows from all this is about thirteen miles, the county's own figure being 13.2, and the widely repeated fourteen is a Wikipedia number that outruns the 11.5 mile parkway it parallels. Across the street to the west, the Legacy Events Center at 151 South 1100 West is Davis County's fairground and arena, and the D&RGW Rail Trail's Farmington trailhead at 950 North 1875 West is a short ride away for anyone continuing north; the two trails do not touch here, but they are neighbors.
The details
Getting there
Park at Farmington Station off Park Lane, I-15 exit 325, and find the trailhead in the lot's northeast corner; the trail leaves the lot southbound.
Before you go
- This is the one-way plan: ride south, train back from Woods Cross, or the reverse.
- Restrooms and water are here and at the two North Salt Lake parks, and nowhere in the middle.
- The rail trail's Farmington trailhead is a separate lot at 950 N 1875 W; ride to it if you are going north, do not expect a signed junction.
The three paved corridors, decided
Legacy, the rail trail and West Davis, in one table.
| Legacy Parkway Trail | D&RGW Rail Trail | West Davis Highway trail | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs | I-215 line to Farmington Station, about 13 miles | West Bountiful to Roy, roughly 24 miles | Farmington to West Point, nearly 10 miles |
| Character | Flat, car-free, wetlands on the west side | Straight rail grade through the cities and the WMA | New in 2024, beside the highway, ties the two together |
| Street crossings | None | Many, at grade | Grade separated at the interchanges |
| Water and restrooms | South-end parks and Farmington Station only | City parks along the way | Sparse; new corridor |
| Handoffs | Jordan River south; West Davis and Farmington Bay at Glovers Lane | Overlaps Legacy briefly in Centerville; north to Weber County | Legacy at Glovers Lane; the Emigration Trail on the west shore |
| Best for | The commute and the long flat family ride | Town-to-town errands and the WMA approach | Reaching the west shore towns without I-15 |
Lengths are the issuers' rounded figures: the county for Legacy, a range for the rail trail because 20 to 25 miles all circulate, and UDOT's own release for West Davis, which opened all lanes January 8, 2024. The Bonneville Shoreline Trail runs the benches east of I-15 and does not touch any of these.
Living with it
What the trail does to an ordinary week.
For the five cities it runs through, the trail is the piece of the settlement that outlived the settlement. The speed limit went to 65 and the trucks came back on January 1, 2020, and the parkway is being widened through 2026, but the trail and the preserve are the parts of the 2005 deal that were built into the ground and stayed. Households west of I-15 in North Salt Lake, Woods Cross, West Bountiful, Centerville and Farmington live with a car-free route to two train stations and to the entire Salt Lake County trail system, and the ones who use it treat it as infrastructure: the school ride, the errand to Station Park, the commute that ends at a platform.
The trade is a corridor. The parkway is a few yards away for the whole length, the widening is loud this year, and the wetland side is beautiful in April and empty in August. The trail is not plowed reliably, the middle miles have no water, and the birds are better than the shade. People who buy near it tend to buy for the fact of it rather than the scenery of it, and that is the right reason: a flat thirteen miles with no stoplights is rare on the Wasatch Front, and it is not going anywhere.
From your town
The same subject, from your own doorstep.
All five cities on this corridor now have companions, so every door on this list opens onto a page written from its own trailhead. North Salt Lake's Foxboro page names the Center Street trailhead at 1100 West, the southernmost signed entrance on the whole route, and the Legacy Regional Park door beside it. Woods Cross's station page explains how the platform at 750 South 800 West turns a one way ride up the trail into a train ride back. West Bountiful's Birnam Woods page counts the four trailheads its own adopted map gives the city, Birnam Woods, Howard Porter, Pages Lane and Mill Creek, and explains why they exist where through streets used to. Centerville's mover page takes the Pages Lane end from the household side, as the trail a resident actually reaches. Farmington's Park Lane page carries the north end where the corridor meets the platform, the retail district and the West Davis terminus.