The west door West Bountiful
Every dead end street on this side of town ends where a highway cut it, and got a trailhead in exchange
Birnam Woods, and the four doors the parkway paid for.
The trailhead behind the Birnam Woods subdivision is one of four the city names on its own adopted map, and the General Plan gives the reason all four exist: they sit where roads were converted to cul de sacs or realigned to build the Legacy Parkway. Beyond them is 2,225 acres of wetland the highway department owns and nobody may walk into. This is the West Bountiful end of the corridor, the two trails nobody knows about, and what a west edge address really gets.
Southern Utah is the ground I actually work, several hours south of Davis County, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was read at the body that publishes it: the National Park Service nomination file for this city's historic district, the city's own General Plan and parks master plan, the state air quality permits, the federal enforcement dockets, the regional planning council's award papers, and the operator's own filings. Every figure carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent takes the ground level work.
The live question
Where do you actually get onto the county trail from a West Bountiful street?
There are four doors and the city names all four itself, which is more than the county manages. The 2018 parks master plan's own maps label a Birnam Woods Trailhead, a Howard Porter Trailhead, a Pages Lane Trailhead and a Mill Creek Trailhead, plus an Onion Parkway Trail access point. The nearest to most of the city is the Birnam Woods door, reached from 830 West north of Porter Lane, which is the 2200 North line, sitting behind the subdivision of the same name with the little park beside it. There is parking. There is no water and no restroom, at that door or at the next two.
The trail itself is not this page's subject and it is written properly elsewhere. The county trail page runs the whole corridor in order from the Jordan River handoff in the south to the Farmington station in the north, with the trailheads that have water and toilets, the empty stretches that have neither, and the current construction. What belongs here is the West Bountiful end of it: which doors this city has, and the genuinely good reason the city gives for why they exist.
That reason is one sentence in the General Plan: four trailheads service the West Bountiful area at areas where roads have been converted to cul de sacs or re aligned to accommodate construction of the Parkway. Read it twice. Every street on this side of town that dead ends at the corridor dead ends because the highway cut it, and the trailhead at the end is the compensation the city got for the street it lost. That is a much better fact than a list of car parks, and it explains the shape of the whole west edge.
The west edge, in numbers
4
Legacy trailheads the city names on its own map
0.4
acres of park behind the Birnam Woods subdivision
3.9 mi
of regional trail inside a 3.31 square mile city
2,225
acres of wetland beyond the trail, closed to the public
The doors
Four ways out the west side, and one of them is on the far bank of the highway.
Naming is the hard part of this subject, because the city, the county and the trail guides all use different labels for the same lots. What follows is what the city's own adopted map calls them, with what other sources say about each, and it is deliberately silent about parking counts because nobody publishes any.
| Door | Where the city puts it | What is there | What else calls it | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birnam Woods Trailhead | Off 830 West, north of Porter Lane, which is the 2200 North line, behind the subdivision | Parking, and the 0.4 acre Birnam Woods Park with a playground and four picnic tables adjoining it | The county trail page places it in West Bountiful and describes a small playground in the park behind the houses | Treat it as the last door before a long stretch. North of here the corridor crosses to the west side of the parkway and the character changes |
| Pages Lane Trailhead | The west end of Pages Lane, which is the 1600 North line | Parking, no water, no restroom | The county trail page describes the Pages Lane trailhead as sitting on the Centerville side of the line, which is a boundary question rather than a contradiction | It is the door most West Bountiful addresses can reach without crossing an arterial, and the city's bike lanes on Pages Lane feed it |
| Mill Creek Trailhead | The city map places it at the northwest, near the 1100 West and 1200 North end | A bare lot. No water, no restroom | The county trail page has it as the first of the bare bones lots and the point where a spur peels off under the parkway toward the pond | The spur to Bountiful Pond runs from here, and the pond is the county page's subject rather than this city's |
| Howard Porter Trailhead | Named on the city's 2018 parks map and not located in any other published document | Unknown. Nothing published describes it | Nothing. It appears on no county list, no trail guide and no enthusiast map | The name is almost certainly the two historic street names run together, Howard Street and Porter Lane. Do not plan a ride around finding it until the city confirms where it is |
| The 500 South regional trailhead | On the west side of the Legacy Parkway at 500 South, reachable from West Bountiful along 500 South | The General Plan describes it as a larger regional trailhead with substantially more parking | It is the one door here with real capacity, and the plan says it gives access to a trail on the parkway's west side running from 500 South to Center Street in North Salt Lake | That west side trail is described in one document only, and it may be the same path other sources describe from the other end, so this page names it and does not map it |
Trailhead names from the West Bountiful Parks, Open Space, Recreation, Arts and Trails Master Plan maps of 12 March 2018 and from the West Bountiful City General Plan, checked in August 2026, cross checked against the Davis County trail page on The Local. Nobody publishes stall counts, trail widths or surface conditions for these lots, so none appear here. The corridor is not consistently cleared after snow.
The details
Getting there
From City Hall go north on 800 West to Porter Lane, west to 830 West, then north into the subdivision; the trailhead and the park sit behind the houses at the end. Coming from the freeway, exit 317 at 400 North and work north and west through the grid. The park and the trailhead share the same ground, so a household can walk children to a playground and get onto a paved regional trail from the same spot, which is the single best thing about this corner of the city.
Before you go
- No water and no restroom here, and none at the next two doors either. Fill bottles before you leave the house.
- The stretch north of here is the longest gap between doors on the whole corridor, so treat this as the last reliable stop if you are riding north.
- Beyond the trail the land is closed. The preserve is wetland mitigation owned by the highway department and there is no public entry into it.
- The parkway itself has been under widening work from 23 March 2026 through the end of the year with no published notice about the parallel trail, so check the project page before a long ride.
The other two
A canal bank and an abandoned railway are the only ways to cross this city without a car.
The Legacy corridor is the famous one and it is not the interesting one. West Bountiful has three regional trails totalling 3.9 miles, and the two nobody outside the city has heard of are the ones that make the place work on foot. The Prospector Trail runs north to south on the abandoned Denver and Rio Grande Railroad alignment, built by the city in coordination with the transit authority. The Onion Parkway Trail runs east to west along the north side of a canal, built with Davis County in 2010 from 800 West out to the Legacy corridor, with a connection east from 800 West to 600 West being pursued when the plan was written.
Look at the geometry and the point becomes obvious. One trail on an old rail grade running the length of the city, one on a canal bank running across it, and one paved regional corridor along the far edge. Three pieces of retired or borrowed infrastructure, and between them they are the pedestrian network. The city's own purpose statement for the canal trail is exactly that: a connector giving ready access from the centre of town to the rail trail and then further west to the Legacy trail.
The Prospector Trail deserves a second look because of what it is part of. The old Rio Grande grade runs a long way north through Davis County, and West Bountiful is its south end; the city simply gave its own segment a different name. The city's 2018 survey found the Prospector Trail among the four most used public facilities in town, alongside City Park, the Legacy trail and the recreation centre in Bountiful, and the plan notes it is the only recreation amenity the south end of the city has at all. No issuer publishes the length of the West Bountiful segment on its own, so this page does not print one.
The bike lanes are the last piece and the city recorded honest public comment on them. Designated lanes run along Pages Lane between the freeway and the Prospector Trail, with a westward extension to the Legacy trail planned, and lanes were added on 600 West from Porter Lane north to the city boundary and on the east side of 1100 West in 2018. Residents told the city that the bike lanes on Pages Lane work very well and that most riders avoid the 500 South lanes because the street is too dangerous. That is public comment recorded in an adopted plan in 2017 and 2018, printed here as what it is, and 500 South is the same street that carries the freeway interchange and the industrial traffic.
A railway that stopped running, a canal bank and a highway shoulder. Everything you can walk or ride across this city on used to be something else.
The far side
A parallel horse trail the city vouches for, and 2,225 acres you may look at and not enter.
Two adopted West Bountiful documents settle a question that has been open across this whole phase. The General Plan states that the construction of the Legacy Parkway included the development of a multi use trail for bikes, pedestrians, and equestrians. The 2018 parks plan's scoping notes record separately, in the city's own summary of what people told it, that Legacy Parkway has an equestrian trail that runs parallel to the paved trail. Neither is the highway department and neither is the county, so the honest form of the claim is that West Bountiful City says so in two adopted documents. That is a good deal stronger than the enthusiast sources this question usually rests on.
Riding is a real land use here rather than a decoration. The city's own plan records a history of equestrian users in the city, that the ground west of 1100 West tends to hold the properties with animals on them, and that an equestrian centre existed and was expected to go away eventually. The plan's list of things the community wanted from new facilities includes an equestrian centre. This page writes all of that as land use, because that is what it is: which parts of the map carry animal keeping, what the zoning permits, and what happened to a facility. The city's municipal code holds the animal keeping rules, including the point based system the practical city guide summarises, and that code is the place to read them.
What sits beyond the trail is the other half of this subject and the answer is short. The Legacy Nature Preserve runs to 2,225 acres, it is owned by the highway department as Clean Water Act wetland mitigation for the parkway itself, and it is not open to the public. You see it from the trail and from the parkway's pull outs, and what you see is mudflat, wet meadow and open channel holding migrating birds in spring and autumn. If the question behind an address on the west edge of West Bountiful is whether you can walk out into the wetlands behind the house, the answer is no, and the trail is as far west as the public goes.
The preserve belongs to the county pages rather than to this one, and the corridor topic carries it properly. What matters at this end is the practical version: the open ground behind the west side of West Bountiful is permanently protected, permanently closed and permanently somebody else's, which is a more stable neighbour than a field waiting for a subdivision. The county birding page has the flyway and the access rules on the wetlands that are open.
Two things on this side of town exist on paper and may not exist on the ground, and both get repeated as if they were built. The first is the Howard Porter Trailhead. It is labelled on the city's own 2018 parks maps and it is not named, located or described in any other document, county list or trail guide. The name looks like the two historic street names run together, and the city is the only body that can say where it is. The second is Birnam Woods Park as people describe it. The 2018 plan carries a concept drawing showing pickleball courts, a pavilion, a restroom, a footbridge, two playgrounds for different age bands, an expanded wetland and a dog area, and none of that is built. On the city's own current inventory the park is four tenths of an acre with one playground, one play structure, four picnic tables, no restroom and no lighting. Check the city's parks page before you count on either.
Living with it
What a west edge address actually gets, and what it will never get.
The west edge of West Bountiful is the part of the city with the clearest bargain attached to it. What it gets is a paved regional trail within walking distance of the street, a small playground, a horizon that is not going to be built on because the highway department owns it and manages it for birds, and quiet, because the loudest thing out there is the parkway itself. What it does not get, and will not, is water at the trailhead, a restroom, a shop, a bus, or any way to walk into the open ground it looks at.
There is a second trade off and it is worth naming because it is the reason the trailheads exist. These streets end where they end because the parkway cut them, so the west side of this city has more cul de sacs and fewer through routes than its grid suggests, and getting from the northwest corner to the southeast corner is a longer trip than the map implies. West Bountiful has exactly two north to south routes west of the freeway, and the plan names the shortage as its main traffic problem.
The last consideration is that this is where the city's remaining land is. The 2026 west side concept, the annexation areas in the General Plan, and the sewer district's spare ground are all out here, which means the west edge is the one part of West Bountiful where the view across the fence could still change on the near side of the trail even though it cannot change on the far side. The mover page carries the west side concept, the acreage and the dates.
One boundary note to close on, since this companion keeps running into them. The pond at the far end of the 1600 North line is the county trail page's spur and the county lakeside page's subject, not this city's. The state publishes an address for it that geocodes to West Bountiful and the parking lot address geocodes to Woods Cross, so the municipal line crosses that corridor between the two, and neither city claims it. West Bountiful's own 2018 map draws the pond outside the city limit. Read the advisory and the fishery rules on the county page, which keeps them current.
The corridor itself
The Legacy Parkway Trail
The whole thirteen miles in trail order, with the doors that have water and toilets and the stretches that have neither.
Read the guideThe northern seam
The lakeside parks
The pond at the end of the 1600 North line, its fishery rules, and the algae advisory that ran all summer.
Read the guideThe other outdoor ground
West Bountiful City Park
Fourteen and a half acres by the freeway, a 0.8 mile loop, and the resident head start on booking the bowery.
Read the guideMoving here
West Bountiful or Bountiful
The west side concept, the annexation math, and what this address buys in rather than builds.
The mover pageJust east of here
Lakeside Golf Course
The 114 acres the city owns between this edge and the middle of town, and what it costs to walk on them.
Read the guideThe practical side
The West Bountiful city guide
The west side in market terms, with the providers, the levy and the listings on these streets.
Open the guideKeep reading
More of West Bountiful on The Local.
The plant
The refinery in the wrong city
The operator says West Bountiful on a page headed Woods Cross, and both are true.
Read the guideThe department
Lakeside Golf Course
A city department on 114 acres, which is 88 per cent of the park land there is.
Read the guide800 West
Onion Street
A mile of 800 West listed in 2004 under a name a sweet Spanish onion crop gave it.
Read the guideThe only one
West Bountiful City Park
Fourteen and a half acres doing all the work, and a cabin the city never explains.
Read the guideMoving here
West Bountiful or Bountiful
One city runs its own power, water and tip. The other one buys nearly all of it in.
Read the guideThe companion
West Bountiful, in full
A plant, a golf course, an onion street and the last open ground on the west side.
Read the pageQuick answers
The west edge, answered.
The city names four doors on its own 2018 parks maps: the Birnam Woods Trailhead off 830 West north of Porter Lane, the Pages Lane Trailhead at the west end of the 1600 North line, the Mill Creek Trailhead toward 1100 West and 1200 North, and a Howard Porter Trailhead whose location is not published anywhere else. There is also a larger regional trailhead with substantially more parking on the west side of the parkway at 500 South, reachable along 500 South. None of the city side doors has water or a restroom.
Because the highway took the streets. The West Bountiful General Plan states that four trailheads service the West Bountiful area at areas where roads have been converted to cul de sacs or re aligned to accommodate construction of the Parkway. In other words, each door is where a through street stopped being a through street when the Legacy Parkway was built, and the trailhead is what the city has there instead. It is the clearest single explanation of why the west edge of this city has the shape it does.
West Bountiful City says so in two adopted documents. Its General Plan states that the construction of the Legacy Parkway included the development of a multi use trail for bikes, pedestrians, and equestrians, and the scoping notes in its 2018 parks master plan record separately that Legacy Parkway has an equestrian trail that runs parallel to the paved trail. Neither statement comes from the highway department or the county, so the accurate form is that the city says it, in writing, twice. Riding is a real land use here: the city's plan records that the ground west of 1100 West tends to hold the properties with animals.
A four tenths of an acre mini park behind the Birnam Woods subdivision, reached from 830 West north of Porter Lane, with one open lawn, four picnic tables, one playground and one play structure. It has no restroom and no lighting. The city's 2018 master plan carries a concept drawing for a much larger park on the site with pickleball courts, a pavilion, a restroom, a footbridge, two playgrounds and a dog area, and none of that is built. Check the city's current parks page rather than the concept before you count on any facility there.
Nobody outside the city has published the answer. The name appears on West Bountiful's own 2018 parks master plan maps, alongside Birnam Woods, Pages Lane and Mill Creek, and it is not named, located or described in any county list, trail guide or map. The name looks like two of the city's historic street names run together, Howard Street and Porter Lane, which would put it in the north of the city, but that is inference rather than a source. Ask the city on 801-292-4486 before planning a ride around finding it.
No. The preserve runs to 2,225 acres and is owned by the highway department as Clean Water Act wetland mitigation for the parkway itself, and it is not open to the public. It can be seen from the Legacy Parkway Trail and from the parkway's pull outs and overlooks, and what you see is mudflat, wet meadow and open channels that hold Pacific Flyway migrants in spring and autumn. For anyone weighing a west edge address, that is the useful version: the open ground behind the trail is permanently protected, permanently closed, and not going to become a subdivision.
The two trails West Bountiful built for itself, and together with the Legacy corridor they make up the city's 3.9 miles of regional trail. The Prospector Trail runs north to south on the abandoned Denver and Rio Grande Railroad alignment, built in coordination with the transit authority, and the city's 2018 survey found it among the four most used public facilities in town and the only recreation amenity the south end of the city has. The Onion Parkway Trail runs east to west along the north side of a canal, built with Davis County in 2010 from 800 West out to the Legacy trail.
Yes, and the city recorded honest public comment about them. Designated lanes run along Pages Lane between the freeway and the Prospector Trail, with a westward extension to the Legacy trail planned, and lanes were added on 600 West from Porter Lane north to the city boundary and on the east side of 1100 West in 2018. In the city's own 2018 plan, residents said the Pages Lane lanes work very well and that most riders avoid the 500 South lanes because that street is too dangerous. That is recorded public comment from 2017 and 2018 rather than a safety finding.
Neither city can claim it cleanly, and West Bountiful's own map does not try. The address the state wildlife division publishes for the pond geocodes to West Bountiful, while the parking lot address that other agencies publish geocodes to Woods Cross, so the municipal line crosses the 1600 North corridor somewhere between them. West Bountiful's 2018 parks maps draw the pond outside the city limit, in the same cluster as the landfill. The pond is a state managed community fishery and it belongs to the county lakeside parks page, which carries the fishery rules and the current health advisory.
A trail door, a small park and a horizon that is not going to change.
The west edge of West Bountiful is a straightforward bargain and it is worth understanding before you commit to it. Paved regional trail from the doorstep, a playground behind the houses, a permanently protected wetland across the fence, and in exchange no water at the trailhead, more cul de sacs than the grid suggests, and the city's last developable ground on the near side of you. That last one is the variable. Tell me which streets you are looking at and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who can tell you what is proposed next door.
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.