The cycle park Draper
Built by a cycling club on city land, and free to everybody
The Draper Cycle Park, and the volunteers who shaped it.
Beside the equestrian centre at the mouth of Corner Canyon there are four graded jump lines, three pump tracks, a strider area, a skills course and a cyclocross venue with its own flyover bridge. It opened in June 2015, it was built by a cycling association on ground the city contributed for under a hundred thousand dollars, and none of it costs anything to ride. Here is how to use it well.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Draper is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
A purpose built cycling park that costs nothing to use.
At the mouth of Corner Canyon, immediately west of the car park at the Andy Ballard Equestrian Center on Highland Drive, there is a piece of ground shaped entirely for bicycles. The Draper Cycle Park opened on 6 June 2015, and it carries four jump lines graded from beginner to expert, a dual pump track, a separate beginner pump track, an area for children on pedal-less strider bikes, a mountain bike skills course, a technical section and a short course cyclocross venue with its own flyover bridge and a run up staircase.
There is no gate, no booking system and no charge. There is also no hire, so it works only if you bring the bike you intend to ride. About two miles of singletrack thread the site, and the whole thing sits directly against the Corner Canyon trail network, which means a session here and a ride up the canyon are the same trip rather than two.
What makes it unusual is not the features, which exist at bike parks across the mountain west. It is who built it. This was assembled by a cycling association on land the city contributed, for under 100,000 dollars to opening day, and it is maintained by volunteers with a bike shop underwriting the work on the pumps and jumps. For a facility that draws a hundred or so riders on an ordinary weekday evening, that is a remarkable piece of arithmetic.
The cycle park by the numbers
6 June 2015
the day it opened
4
jump lines, beginner through expert
3
pump tracks, including a beginner one
0 dollars
to ride any of it
What is on the ground
Seven distinct things on one piece of donated land.
This is a denser site than it looks from the car park, because the features are nested rather than laid out in a row. Here is what is actually there and who each part is for.
| The feature | What it is | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Four jump lines | Graded green, blue, black and a pro double black, built as nested loops so that each one is a step up from the last | Everyone, provided you start at the bottom grade rather than the one you watched |
| The dual pump track | Two riders side by side on a rolling circuit, ridden without pedalling | Riders working on body position, and anybody who enjoys racing a friend |
| The beginner pump track | A separate, gentler circuit away from the main one | First timers and children, without the pressure of the dual track |
| The strider area | Ground shaped for pedal-less balance bikes | Very young children, and the reason this park works for a whole household |
| The skills pocket park | A mountain bike skills area with built features | Technical practice, and a good warm up before the canyon |
| The technical course | A built sequence of stunts and obstacles | Riders training rather than sessioning |
| The cyclocross venue | A short course with a custom flyover bridge and a run up staircase | Cyclocross and cross training, and unusual to find in a public park |
Features as described by the Draper Cycle Park Association and by cycling coverage of the park, checked 8 August 2026. A volunteer maintained park changes shape as lines are rebuilt and dig days reshape features, so treat this as the layout rather than a permanent inventory.
The build
A cycling club, a city and under a hundred thousand dollars.
The Draper Cycle Park Association grew out of the Salt Lake Velodrome Association, founded in 2007 by John Newell with the long term aim of building Utah a velodrome. What it got first, and what it built, was this. Draper City contributed underused ground at the canyon mouth and worked with the association on the master plan, and construction began in earnest in 2014 with the park opening the following June.
The building was done by Sagebrush Trails, a Park City company, with Derek Thompson and Ric Statten leading the trail work and volunteers filling in around them. The total spend to opening was reported by an association board member as under 100,000 dollars, which for a facility of this size is close to implausible until you understand how much of the labour was donated. The bike shop Go-Ride took on volunteer maintenance of the pumps and jumps, and the association still runs seasonal dig days.
That model is worth pausing on because it explains the character of the place. A municipal parks department building this would have produced something safer, blander and considerably more expensive. A rider built park produces lines that are genuinely progressive, because the people shaping them ride them, and it produces a maintenance culture where the users repair the damage. It also means the park depends on volunteers continuing to turn up, which is a real fragility as well as a strength.
The city gets the credit it deserves for the land. Ground at the mouth of a canyon on a road that already carries trail traffic is not a throwaway asset, and putting a free cycling facility on it rather than selling it was a decision. It is also why the park and the canyon trail system function as one place: they share an approach, a car park and a user base.
A rider built park has lines that progress properly, because the people who shaped them ride them.
The one rule that matters
Wet dirt is closed dirt, and this is not a suggestion.
Everything else about using this park is common sense. This part is the thing that decides whether the park still exists in five years, so it gets its own section.
A pump track and a dirt jump line are shaped surfaces, built and maintained to a profile, and that profile is what makes them work. Riding them when the dirt is saturated cuts ruts into the shaped faces and lips, and those ruts set hard when the ground dries. Repairing them is not a rake and an hour; it is a rebuild, done by volunteers, and it comes out of the same finite pool of labour that would otherwise be improving the park.
So the pumps and jump lines close when they are wet from rain or snowmelt, and the working season runs roughly from March into November. In a valley with a genuine spring thaw that removes a meaningful part of the calendar, and it is the single most common reason a trip here does not happen. The honest answer on a wet morning is to go and ride the all weather trails in the canyon behind instead, which are surfaced for exactly this.
The practical habit is to check before you drive rather than to judge by the sky. The association and the city both put out condition information, and a dry afternoon after a wet night is exactly the situation where a rider's optimism and the ground's actual state disagree most. If the lip of a jump gives underfoot, it is too wet, and that test takes ten seconds in the car park.
The upper lines are expert terrain in a free public park, which is an unusual combination. Absence of a gate does not mean absence of consequence. The black and pro double black lines carry built jumps with real gaps, and they are shaped for riders who can already do this, not for riders who want to try. The park is nested precisely so you can work up through the grades, and the sensible order is to session the green line until it is boring, then the blue, and to watch a lap of anything above that before committing to it.
The part that is not built
The velodrome has been a target for a long time.
The association that built this park started life in 2007 with a different objective: a permanent velodrome for Utah. That has not happened. It remains the long term goal, with a fundraising figure of 1.5 million dollars named against it, and the cycle park was in one sense the thing that got built while the bigger project waited.
It belongs on this page for the same reason the announced half of The Point belongs on that one. A visitor reading about this site will find the velodrome mentioned in coverage going back a decade, and it is easy to come away thinking one exists here. It does not. What exists is jump lines, pump tracks, a skills area and a cyclocross course, all of which are excellent and none of which is a banked track.
Whether it is ever built is a fundraising question rather than a planning one, and a volunteer association raising seven figures moves at the pace volunteer associations move. In the meantime the park it did build serves several hundred riders a week for nothing, which is a fair return on the ambition even if the ambition itself is still waiting.
Coverage of this park is old, and old coverage describes plans as if they were imminent. A great deal of what is written about the Draper Cycle Park dates from its opening years, when the velodrome and further phases were being discussed actively. Read any of it with the date in mind. The features listed on this page are what was on the ground in August 2026, and the association's own channels are the place to check what has been added, rebuilt or is being dug this season.
Using it well
Four habits that keep a volunteer built park working.
Ride the grade below the one you want, first. The lines are nested for exactly this and there is no shame in it: the green line teaches the timing that the blue line assumes, and the blue teaches what the black assumes. Riders who skip a grade here are the ones who end an afternoon early, and they are also the ones who case a lip and put a repair job on somebody else's Saturday.
Go on a weekday evening if you want it busy and a weekday morning if you want it quiet. This park fills after work rather than at weekends, which is the opposite of the canyon behind it, and on a summer evening the count runs to a hundred riders or so. That is good company if you are learning and a poor session if you wanted the top line to yourself.
And turn up to a dig day once. The association runs them seasonally, the work is not skilled, and an afternoon of it explains more about why the lines are shaped the way they are than a year of riding them does. It is also the only reason any of this is free. If the canyon behind is the other half of your day, the ranked list has the rest of what this city offers.
Keep reading
More of Draper on The Local.
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
A canyon the city bought, an aquarium wing that opened this year, and a free jump park.
Read the guideThe Point
Built, and announced
Six hundred acres of former prison ground, and what is actually in the ground today.
Read the guideThe aquarium
Loveland Living Planet Aquarium
The building roughly doubled in February 2026, and a U2 stage stands outside it.
Read the guideThe canyon
Corner Canyon and its rules
One way climbs, one way descents, Class 1 e-bikes only, and no dogs above the line.
Read the guideMoving here
The Point of the Mountain commute
Two railheads, one pinch in the mountains, and a light rail line approved but unfunded.
Read the guideThe companion
Draper, the whole picture
The canyon, the aquarium, the cycle park, The Point and the commute, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The cycle park, answered.
At the mouth of Corner Canyon, immediately west of the car park at the Andy Ballard Equestrian Center on Highland Drive in Draper. It shares an approach with the lower Corner Canyon trailhead, which means a session on the jump lines and a ride up the canyon are one trip rather than two. Parking is at the equestrian centre and there is no separate entrance or gate.
Yes, entirely. There is no gate, no booking system, no membership and no charge of any kind. There is also no hire on site, so the park only works if you bring the bike you intend to ride. It was built by the Draper Cycle Park Association on ground Draper City contributed, opened on 6 June 2015, and it is maintained by volunteers with a local bike shop underwriting work on the pumps and jumps.
Four jump lines graded green, blue, black and a pro double black, built as nested loops; a dual pump track and a separate beginner pump track; an area shaped for children on pedal-less strider bikes; a mountain bike skills pocket park; a technical skills course; a short course cyclocross venue with a custom flyover bridge and a run up staircase; and about two miles of singletrack. It connects directly into the Corner Canyon trail network.
Yes, and the layout is designed for it. The jump lines are nested so that each grade is a step up from the one below rather than a leap, and there is a beginner pump track separate from the dual one plus an area for very young children on balance bikes. The sensible order is to session the green line until it feels dull, then move to the blue, and to watch a lap of anything above that before committing to it.
Whenever the ground is wet from rain or snowmelt. Pump tracks and dirt jump lines are shaped surfaces, and riding them saturated cuts ruts that set hard and take volunteers weeks to repair, so the pumps and jumps close rather than take the damage. The working season runs roughly from March into November. On a wet morning the all weather trails in Corner Canyon behind the park are the better plan.
The Draper Cycle Park Association, which grew out of the Salt Lake Velodrome Association founded in 2007 by John Newell, on land contributed by Draper City. Construction began in earnest in 2014 and was carried out by Sagebrush Trails of Park City, with Derek Thompson and Ric Statten leading the trail building and volunteers filling in. Total spend to the June 2015 opening was reported as under 100,000 dollars.
No. A permanent velodrome has been the association's long term objective since it was founded in 2007, with 1.5 million dollars named as the fundraising target, and it has not been built. It appears in coverage of the park going back a decade, which is why visitors sometimes arrive expecting one. What is there is jump lines, pump tracks, a skills area and a cyclocross course, and all of it is excellent.
Weekday evenings, which is the opposite of the canyon trails behind it. A summer evening here has been described as carrying a hundred or so riders, and that is good company if you are learning and a frustrating session if you wanted the upper line to yourself. Weekday mornings are the quiet window. Weekends are busy but spread across the canyon rather than concentrated on the park.
Your own bike, since nothing is hired on site, and a helmet at minimum. Pads and a full face are normal on the black and pro lines and sensible on the blue. Water, because there is no facility on the site itself. And a plan for the Corner Canyon trails behind it, because the two share a car park and an approach and are considerably better used as one outing than as two separate trips.
A free bike park at the mouth of a city owned canyon.
This combination does not exist in many places, and on the eastern side of Draper it is a genuine part of what an address buys. What is worth weighing alongside it is what the same canyon mouth does to weekend traffic on the streets below, and which of those streets absorb it. Tell me what matters and a Salt Lake County partner agent takes the ground work while I take the homework and the lending 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.