The Cedar Hills Golf Club and the Short Course
The draw · a public par 71 on the best ground in the north county
The course is why people who do not live here drive here. It sits at 10640 North Clubhouse Drive on the last rise before American Fork Canyon, eighteen holes at par 71 across roughly 6,600 yards, laid out by Robert Muir Graves and Damian Pascuzzo on ground that falls away hard in every direction. The opening tee shot drops close to 200 feet. The fourteenth green stands at 5,253 feet, about 750 feet above the American Fork River in the canyon below it, and the view from up there is the reason the photographs of this place all look the same.
Beside it, occupying the ground the driving range used to hold, is a separate six hole par three layout of 60 to 115 yards designed by John Fought and built in 2022. It walks only, it takes about three quarters of an hour, it accepts groups of up to six, and it is the part of this facility most people do not know exists. It is also the part that stayed open all the way through the 2026 construction season while the main course was cut in half.
Both are city property, which is what makes the pricing what it is. As published for 2026 and checked in August, eighteen holes riding on a weekday cost 52 dollars for a resident and 56 for everybody else, weekends and holidays run 56 and 60 riding with no walking permitted, nine holes walking starts at 18 dollars on a resident weekday rate, and a round on the Short Course runs 10 to 13 dollars. Season passes range from a junior walking pass at 1,000 dollars to an individual five day riding pass at 1,750, and all of them expire on 31 October.
Why it ranks first
Because it is the only thing in Cedar Hills that a stranger would cross a county for, and because its position is genuinely rare. Municipal courses are common in Utah. Municipal courses with 750 feet of relief under the fourteenth green and a canyon mouth on the boundary are not. Nothing else in these 2.73 square miles competes.
What 2026 actually looked like
Not like a normal season. The course reopened on 9 March with nine holes plus the Short Course while a new irrigation system went in, eighteen holes were expected across July and August, and from Saturday 8 August the layout reverted to the front nine only for the rest of the year. Players wanting a full round play the front nine twice, booking the second round about two and a half hours after the first.
The details
Getting there
Cedar Hills Drive runs the length of the city and the club sits at the top of it, signed off Clubhouse Drive. There is a large lot at the clubhouse, which also houses the city's Community Recreation Center and the Vista Room, so the car park is busier than the tee sheet suggests.
Before you go
- Carts are mandatory on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. Walking rates simply do not exist on those days.
- Ring the pro shop on 801-796-1705 before you travel in 2026. The configuration moved twice inside one season.
- Residents take 50 dollars off a season pass with proof of residency, which is normally a current utility bill.
Heritage Park and the amphitheatre
Free · a grass bowl with a stage at the bottom, finished in 2024
At 4425 West Cedar Hills Drive the ground drops into a natural bowl, and in 2024 the city put a stage at the bottom of it. The amphitheatre is the only significant new public facility Cedar Hills has opened this decade and it changed what the park is for. Before it, Heritage Park was a playground, a pavilion with seven tables, restrooms, a basketball court, a sand volleyball court under mature trees and a lot of grass. It is all still there. What it now also has is a venue.
The seating is the hillside. There are no fixed seats, no numbered rows and no roof, so an audience sits on chairs and blankets across the grass and the concrete apron, and the performers work close enough that the front of the crowd is inside the playing space. The first production staged on it was King Lear, in June 2024, at fifteen dollars a ticket.
The park does trailhead duty as well. The Cedar Hills Parkway trail runs through it, which makes it a natural place to start or finish a walk across the city, and it is the anchor venue of the June festival week. For most of the year, though, it is simply the best piece of public ground in the city to sit on.
Why it ranks second
Because it is free, it is open every day of the year, and since 2024 it does something no other address in the city does. A park with a stage on it is a different proposition from a park, and this one has a resident theatre company and a December tree lighting attached to it.
What it does not have
Water play. The splash pad in this city is at Harvey Park on Harvey Boulevard, which is a different park in a different part of town, and the two get confused constantly. If a water feature is the reason for the trip, drive to Harvey.
The details
Getting there
The park sits on Cedar Hills Drive itself, which is the spine of the whole city, so it needs no navigation. Parking is on site and it is adequate on an ordinary day and inadequate on a performance night, when the streets and the neighbouring lots take the overflow.
Before you go
- Bring a chair or a blanket to anything staged here. The hillside is the seating and there is nothing else.
- Nothing on that hillside is shaded after about four in the afternoon, and the June and July evenings run hot until the sun clears the ridge.
- The park is the anchor venue of the June festival week, when the ordinary rules about parking and quiet do not apply.
The Family Festival week
Late May into June · eight days, one parade and a drone show
The city's own week ran from 30 May to 6 June in 2026 and it culminates on the Saturday. That final day carries a 5K in the morning, a parade that forms at Deerfield Elementary and runs north up 4600 West to the roundabout before finishing on Cedar Hills Drive near Heritage Park, a car show on the amphitheatre grounds from ten until four, and a carnival running through the afternoon and evening.
The days before it carry the rest: live music, food vendors, a swim night, a Friday evening dinner, and a set of activities spread across the park and the surrounding streets. Most of the week costs nothing. The swim night, the Friday dinner and the carnival are the paid parts, and they are the parts worth checking in advance because they are the ones that sell out or run to a fixed capacity.
The finish is the piece people travel for. A drone show flies at about a quarter to ten on the Saturday evening with a live band playing under it, and fireworks follow at ten. Both go up over Mesquite Park rather than over the amphitheatre grounds, which is the single most common navigational error of the week.
Why it ranks third
Because it is genuinely the best week of the year here and it exists for eight days. Everything above it on this list is available for months at a stretch. A week that vanishes for the other forty four cannot outrank a course and a park that do not.
The schedule is republished every year
The shape repeats and the hours do not. Cedar Hills City publishes an activity schedule for each edition and third party event listings lag it badly, so treat any time you find anywhere else as a rumour until the city has printed it. The festival committee also runs its own contact line.
The details
Getting there
Nothing in the week needs a freeway. The venues are within about half a mile of each other along Cedar Hills Drive, and the constraint is parking near the park on the Saturday rather than distance from anywhere.
Before you go
- The parade route runs north up 4600 West and the roads on it close. Park south of the route or walk in.
- The drone show and the fireworks are at Mesquite Park. Standing on the amphitheatre grounds at ten puts you in the wrong place.
- Confirm every time against the city's own published activity schedule before you travel for a specific event.
The Canyon Road trailhead onto the county corridor
Free, year round · the city's own door onto seventeen paved miles
The best long ride available from Cedar Hills is not the city's, but the door onto it is. The Canyon Road trailhead sits at 3395 West Canyon Heights Drive, just off North Canyon Road, and it carries a small car park, restrooms and picnic tables. From it the Murdock Canal Trail runs paved and flat in both directions along the bench, and the next trailhead south at Highland Glen is about two and a half miles away.
This is the highest ground the corridor covers, which is the practical reason to start here rather than lower down. The trail runs level because it is laid over an enclosed canal, so the elevation is banked into the alignment rather than paid for in climbing, and the valley falls away to the west the whole way. Cedar Hills and American Fork are the two cities on the corridor whose access runs through neighbourhood streets rather than through purpose built parks, and this lot is the exception that gives Cedar Hills a proper one.
Everything else about the corridor, its full length, the aqueduct beneath the asphalt, the underpasses, the equestrian path and the mile markers, belongs to seven cities equally rather than to this one, and The Local writes it once at valley level rather than seven times.
Why it ranks fourth
Because the asset is superb and it is borrowed. Cedar Hills owns a trailhead on a county corridor, which is worth ranking and is worth using, but six other cities have exactly the same claim on the trail itself. A borrowed amenity cannot outrank the things this city built and paid for.
Where this entry stops
At the car park. The route, the history, the surface, the crossings and the riding rules of the trail itself are on the region page that covers all seventeen miles properly, rather than the fraction of them that happen to sit inside these city limits.
The details
Getting there
Head to North Canyon Road on the eastern edge of the city and turn onto Canyon Heights Drive. The lot is small and signed, and it fills on a fine Saturday morning well before the trail does.
Before you go
- Parking here is limited. It is a neighbourhood scale lot rather than a park and ride, so arrive early or walk in from a nearby street.
- People ride this corridor to work as well as for exercise, so eight on a weekday morning is busier here than noon on a Sunday.
- The corridor itself, including its length, its underpasses and its rules, is documented on the region's trail page rather than here.
Harvey Park
Free, year round · the water feature, the courts and a playground built around a rocket
Harvey Park at 4301 West Harvey Boulevard is the newer of the city's two significant parks and it is the one built for a hot afternoon. The playground runs on a space theme, planets and stars and rocket ships worked through the equipment, with a great deal of climbing and a zipline through the middle of it. Next to that sits the splash pad, which is the only public water play in the city.
The court provision is the other half of the case for it. Pickleball, tennis and basketball all sit on this one site, which in a city with no recreation complex makes this address the default answer for anybody who wants to hit something. The courts are usable in every month; the water is a warm season feature.
Harvey Boulevard itself is worth one clarifying sentence, because search results routinely imply otherwise. It is a residential collector inside the city, not a route to the canyon and not a way onto the mountain. The park is a neighbourhood destination that happens to be good enough to drive to.
Why it ranks fifth
Because it is free, open all year, and holds the only splash pad and the only public tennis and pickleball courts in the city. It ranks below the entries above it because it is a very good neighbourhood park rather than a reason to leave your own city, and it would sit unremarkably in a list drawn from anywhere else on this bench.
The confusion worth avoiding
Heritage Park and Harvey Park get swapped constantly, including in directions people give each other. Heritage has the amphitheatre, the pavilion and the sand volleyball. Harvey has the splash pad, the zipline and the courts. They are about a mile apart and they do different jobs.
The details
Getting there
Turn off Cedar Hills Drive onto the residential grid on the western side of the city and follow Harvey Boulevard. There is parking at the park and street parking around it, and neither is a problem outside a summer weekend afternoon.
Before you go
- The splash pad is seasonal and its operating window is set by the city rather than by the weather. Confirm before you drive out for it.
- There is limited shade over the play equipment, which matters here between about noon and four in July.
- The courts are first come rather than booked, so a weekday evening is a better bet than a Saturday morning.
The bench trail above the last streets
Free, unpaved · real trail with an unfinished feel, and no official designation
Above the highest houses on the eastern side of the city the pavement stops and a dirt trail runs north and south along the mountain front. It is mapped, it is ridden and walked constantly, and it connects south toward the Grove Creek and Battle Creek drainages above Pleasant Grove and north toward the canyon mouth. It is also, in the strict sense, not a designated trail at all.
That is the honest headline and it is worth stating plainly. The route through here is commonly called the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, and the corridor does follow the terrace the ancient lake cut into the mountain, but none of the stretch above Cedar Hills carries an official designation. Parts of the wider Timpanogos segment cross private ground. Social trails branch off it constantly and are not signed. Pleasant Grove calls its own piece of the same line the Bench Road Trail, after the aqueduct maintenance road it follows, which is why the same path answers to three names inside four miles.
What you actually get is very good ground on an unfinished network: level running and riding on the old lake terrace, an open west facing view over the whole valley, and a genuine sense of being out of town within ten minutes of leaving a driveway. What you do not get is signage, a car park, a map board or any assurance about where the public right to be there begins and ends.
Why it ranks sixth
Because it is the only unpaved ground on this list and the only place in Cedar Hills where the city stops being a city, and because it costs nothing at any hour. It ranks last because it asks more of a visitor than everything above it: no parking, no signs, no facilities and no certainty about the line you are following.
Treat it as a local network
Utah County's stretch of the Bonneville Shoreline is fragmented rather than continuous, which the region trail page explains properly. Above Cedar Hills that means a good local loop rather than a route to somewhere else, and it means the connection you see on a mapping app may cross ground somebody owns.
The details
Getting there
There is no trailhead here in the built sense. Access is on foot from the upper residential streets on the eastern edge of the city, and the practical alternative is to start from the Canyon Road trailhead on the paved corridor and climb from there.
Before you go
- There is no water, no restroom and no shade of any kind on this ground, and the exposure is total by mid morning in July.
- Respect the private ground. Sections of the wider segment cross land that is not public and the boundaries are not marked out here.
- Tell somebody where you are going. Cell coverage is fine on the bench and the social trail network is easier to get turned around in than it looks.
The three ways out of town
One city, three surfaces, and only one of them is signed.
Entries four and six on this list and the canyon at the end of the road are the three ways to leave Cedar Hills under your own power, they are constantly described as though they were one trail system, and picking the wrong one wastes a morning. Here is the difference in the terms that decide which one to walk out of the door toward.
| The paved corridor | The bench trail | The canyon | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A county trail on an enclosed canal, seventeen paved miles across seven cities | An unsigned dirt line on the old lake terrace above the top streets | A federal recreation corridor up SR-92 from the junction at the city's edge |
| Whose it is | Utah County, written once at region level | Nobody's, in the formal sense; parts of the wider segment cross private ground | The Uinta Wasatch Cache National Forest, with the logistics carried by American Fork |
| The way on from here | The Canyon Road trailhead at 3395 West Canyon Heights Drive | On foot from the upper eastern streets, or up from the paved corridor | Canyon Road to the SR-92 junction at the mouth |
| Surface and grade | Paved, flat, and level enough to push a pram along | Dirt, mostly level along the terrace, with steep social trails off it | Paved highway with a fee station, and gates on the road above |
| What it costs | Nothing, including the parking | Nothing, and nothing is provided either | A federal recreation fee, with a separate ticketed system for the cave |
| Winter | Usable; there is no seasonal gate anywhere on it | Snow and mud make spring the difficult season rather than winter | The upper road closes seasonally; check before you drive |
Alignments and access points as published by Utah County, Cedar Hills City and the mapping communities that document the bench, checked 14 August 2026. What the table cannot compress is that these three are not alternatives to each other. One is a commuting surface, one is a local network with no guarantees attached, and one is somebody else's fee area that happens to start at the end of a city street.
Before you go
What to settle first, because three of these six run on somebody else's clock.
Three things go wrong in Cedar Hills and each of them takes about two minutes to avoid: booking eighteen holes on a course that is running nine, driving to the wrong park for the water, and standing on the wrong grass at ten o'clock on the Saturday of the June week.
Sort before you drive
- How many holes are actually open, because the 2026 configuration changed twice inside one season
- Whether you want the water feature or the amphitheatre, because they are in two different parks about a mile apart
- The city's published activity schedule, if the plan is anything inside the June festival week
- Which day you are playing, since carts are mandatory from Friday through Sunday and on holidays
- Whether a Short Course round would suit you better, at 10 to 13 dollars and about forty five minutes
Check on the day
- Parking at the Canyon Road trailhead, which is a neighbourhood scale lot that fills early on a fine Saturday
- Whether the splash pad is running, since its window is set by the city rather than by the temperature
- The canyon's fee and gate position, if the plan involves driving past the SR-92 junction
- Show times at the amphitheatre, which are published by the company rather than by the city
- The ground underfoot on the bench in spring, when the terrace holds mud long after the streets have dried
Turn up and it is fine
- Heritage Park on any ordinary day, free, open and the best piece of grass in the city
- Harvey Park's courts, which are first come and rarely full on a weekday evening
- The paved corridor from the trailhead, which carries no gate and no season
- The bench above the top streets, on foot, at any hour, with nothing to book and nothing provided
The trail above the top streets is not an official trail, and parts of the wider segment cross private ground. The dirt line running north and south along the mountain front above Cedar Hills is genuinely good ground and it is genuinely unfinished. It is widely called the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, it follows the terrace the ancient lake left behind, and none of the stretch above this city carries a formal designation. Pleasant Grove calls its own piece of the same line the Bench Road Trail. Social trails branch off it without signs, there is no built trailhead, and the wider Timpanogos segment includes stretches across land that is not public. Walk it, but walk it knowing that, keep to the obvious line, and do not treat a route drawn on a mapping app as a statement about access.
What this list leaves out, and why
- American Fork Canyon. It starts where this city ends and it is not this city's to explain. The fee, the gates, the reservoir and the parking are on American Fork's canyon page, which carries the canyon's logistics for the whole valley.
- Timpanogos Cave, the Alpine Loop, Tibble Fork and Cascade Springs. All four are minutes from a Cedar Hills driveway and none of them is in Cedar Hills. They are on the Timpanogos and Alpine Loop page.
- The corridor across the bench. Cedar Hills holds a trailhead on it and no claim to it, and six other cities sit in exactly the same position, which is why the alignment, the buried canal, the underpasses and the etiquette all live on the corridor page. What is ranked above is a car park with restrooms on it.
- The valley's big family venues. Thanksgiving Point, the museums, the farms and the pools are all a short drive from here and none of them is here. They are priced and dated against each other on the family weekends page.
- A seventh entry. The Community Recreation Center and the Vista Room at the clubhouse are a rentable room and a banquet space rather than an outing, and there is no other candidate. Six is what this city holds, so six is what this list runs to.
