The 12 best things to do in Park City.

On the other flank of town, Deer Valley has been running since 1981 and is one of a small handful of resorts in the country that remains skis only. Whether that is a feature or an annoyance depends entirely on which plank you stand on, and it is the honest first question to ask before you buy a ticket.

Deer Valley built its reputation on grooming and on service, and the difference is real enough that people plan trips around it. It is also in the middle of the biggest change in its history: a terrain expansion on the Jordanelle side, anchored by the new East Village, that has been cited at more than 5,700 acres across ten peaks.

That expansion sits in Wasatch County rather than inside Park City limits, which matters more for buyers than for skiers, and I cover why on the Park City city guide.

Main Street is the part of Park City that would still be interesting if the snow never came back. A fire leveled most of the commercial core in 1898, and the district that got rebuilt afterward is what you walk today: a tight run of 19th-century storefronts holding galleries, restaurants, bars and shops, with a chairlift running up out of the middle of it.

Do it slowly and on foot. The parking is the worst part of the experience and the free bus solves it completely, which is the single most useful thing a first-time visitor can be told about this town.

The full walk, including what to look at and when to avoid the crowds, is on the Main Street guide.

Most Olympic venues become monuments. This one stayed a working sports facility, and it lets the public onto the equipment. At the Utah Olympic Park in Bear Hollow, just north of town, you can ride the same 2002 bobsled track with a professional pilot at the controls, at speeds over 60 miles an hour and forces of four to five times gravity.

It is expensive, it lasts about a minute, and almost nobody regrets it. If that is not your idea of a good time, the same site runs extreme tubing down the Nordic ski-jump hills, an alpine slide, ziplines and ropes courses on a day pass, plus free viewing of athletes actually training.

The venue is on the schedule again for the 2034 Winter Games. Details, pricing structure and what is included are on the Utah Olympic Park guide.

Park City is the only Gold-Level IMBA Ride Center in the world, scored at 96 points, sitting on top of more than 400 miles of public non-motorized trail. The single trail that explains why is the Mid-Mountain, an IMBA Epic that runs roughly 20 miles while holding close to 8,000 feet the entire way.

Because it contours instead of climbing, it is a long ride rather than a hard one, threading aspen groves, old mining ground and open ski-run meadows from the Deer Valley side across to Summit Park. Almost every other trail in the network touches it somewhere, which is why locals talk about rides in terms of how they got on and off it.

You do not need a bike to use it. It is a hiking trail too, and one of the best in the state.

The Park City Museum sits on Main Street in the building that used to be City Hall, and which also held the fire department, the police and the territorial jail. You can walk down into that jail, which locals call the dungeon, and it does a better job of explaining what a mining boomtown was than any placard could.

The other artifact worth the ticket is upstairs in spirit if not in fact: a repurposed mining cart from the Skier Subway, the underground train that hauled skiers into the mountain in the 1960s under Treasure Mountains, the resort that became Park City Mountain. Very few places can show you the exact object where one economy turned into another.

Give it an hour. It reframes the rest of the street.

On summer Sundays, lower Main Street closes to cars and fills with roughly 200 vendors selling handmade goods, regional art, vintage odds and ends and street food, with live music running through it. It has been going since 2008 and it is the most reliably good free thing in town.

The schedule is the catch. It runs a set number of Sundays across the summer rather than every single one, typically starting in early June with a gap in the middle of the season, so check the current calendar before you plan a Sunday around it.

Go early if you want to park anywhere sensible, or skip the problem and take the bus.

The Egyptian Theatre opened on Christmas Day 1926, built in the Egyptian revival style that swept American theatre design after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. It stands on the site of the Dewey Theatre, which collapsed under a snow load in January 1916, a detail that tells you something honest about winter here.

It is a working venue rather than a museum piece, running concerts, comedy and stage productions through the year in a room small enough that there is no bad seat. On a night when the weather has closed the canyon and nobody is skiing, it is the best room in town.

Buy ahead. It sells out in a way a theatre this size always does.

Every August the Kimball Art Center takes over Main Street for the Park City Kimball Arts Festival, bringing roughly 150 to 200 jury-selected artists, live music, food and tasting tents into the historic district for a weekend. It has been running for more than half a century, which makes it older than either resort's modern form.

It is the summer event that most resembles what late January used to feel like: the whole street given over to one thing, shoulder to shoulder, worth planning a trip around.

Dates land in early August most years. Confirm the current ones before you book anything, because they move.

The biggest payoff for the least effort anywhere near town. Bloods Lake sits high in the mountains above Park City, and from the Bloods Lake Trailhead it is roughly a mile round trip to a genuine alpine lake ringed by trees, which means young kids can finish it.

Two practical notes that trip people up. The trailhead moved in 2020, so older directions send you to the wrong place, and the trail connection between Bloods Lake and Guardsman Pass itself is permanently closed. The old spot at the pass is now a viewpoint and a short-term drop-off, nothing more.

The road over Guardsman Pass is seasonal, generally open May through October. In winter this hike does not exist.

The Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail runs 28 miles from Park City out through Wanship and Coalville to Echo Reservoir, on the bed of a rail line the Union Pacific stopped running in 1989. Utah dedicated it as a state park in 1992, making it the first non-motorized rail trail in the state.

Because it was built for trains, it drops steadily from about 6,500 feet in Park City to around 5,500 at Echo, with no real climbs in either direction. The first few miles out of town are paved, then it turns to gravel, and the landscape shifts from alpine through Silver Creek Canyon into open farmland along the interstate.

Ride it out and arrange a pickup, or turn around whenever you have had enough. It is also open to walking, running, horses and Nordic skiing in winter.

People do not associate Park City with water, and then they move here and buy a paddleboard. Jordanelle Reservoir sits southeast toward Heber with a state park and a marina, and Rockport Reservoir is about 17 miles northeast, both covering boating, fishing and paddling. Deer Creek is a little further south.

For something wilder, head east through Kamas and up the Mirror Lake Highway into the Uinta Mountains, where alpine lakes, hiking and camping open up once the snow clears. It is the closest thing to real wilderness within an hour of town.

All of it is seasonal and all of it depends on snowpack, so conditions and access change year to year.