The McLeod Creek Trail Split Into Two Trails This Year, and Silver Springs Sits Right at the Seam

On the morning of August 22, a dance company from Ririe-Woodbury Dance Academy set up beneath the aspens along McLeod Creek Trail, not far from a stretch of ground that construction crews had been trenching all summer. Musician Morgan Snow of Triggers & Slips played a set within earshot of the roadwork. Guided tours moved visitors from Copper Moose Farm Stand toward Temple Har Shalom, stopping for site-specific installations and a performance from Eligio and Coco Garcia along the way. It was the return of Art on the Trails, presented by the Arts Council of Park City & Summit County with Basin Recreation, and it happened exactly as scheduled, on a trail that is, technically, under a multi-year construction restriction.

That's the part worth sitting with if you live in Silver Springs. The trail didn't wait for construction to finish. It never had to, because the restricted zone isn't the blanket closure the road signs make it look like. It has a specific boundary, and that boundary is named after the neighborhood's own entrance road.

The Restriction Starts at Your Street

State Route 224 is in the middle of a multi-year widening project for High Valley Transit's bus rapid transit line, and construction on the corridor, which runs the length of SR-224 from Kimball Junction to Old Town, began April 6, 2026. The trails that shadow the highway are being restricted in segments, and the segment that touches Silver Springs most directly starts at the street.

Here's what the restriction actually covers:

The two restrictions aren't mirror images of each other. They cover different stretches of the corridor. What connects them is a single underpass linking the east and west trails, which was built to stay open through construction specifically so residents on either side can still cross between them.

For Silver Springs, the relevant fact is the first row of that table. The restricted zone on McLeod Creek Trail doesn't begin somewhere abstract up the highway. It begins at Silver Springs Drive and runs north toward Canyons Resort Drive. If your loop takes you north toward Canyons Village, you're in that zone during construction season. If you're headed south toward Willow Creek Park or into town, you're on a stretch the restriction doesn't touch.

That's a different picture than "the trail is closed," which is how most residents describe it secondhand. It's closed in one direction, on one side, starting at a boundary you already know by name.

This Isn't a One-Season Inconvenience

The harder thing to accept is the timeline. High Valley Transit's rapid transit project is contracted to run through late 2028, with construction seasons from April into fall each year and a full pause every winter, roughly December through March. Crews also stand down during major summer holidays. So the restriction on McLeod Creek Trail isn't something to wait out until October. It's a recurring seasonal pattern that will repeat for at least two more construction cycles before the bus service itself launches in 2028.

Knowing that changes how you plan. A resident who assumes the detour is temporary might keep checking back every few weeks hoping it's resolved. A resident who knows the shape of the schedule, active April through fall, dormant each winter, can just build the seam into their routine the way they'd build in a seasonal road closure on a mountain pass. It reopens every winter. It comes back every spring. That's the rhythm for the life of the project.

The Corridor Kept Its Own Calendar Anyway

What Art on the Trails proved this August is that the neighborhood's actual use of the corridor doesn't run on the construction schedule at all. It runs on its own.

The event's route traced a stretch of McLeod Creek Trail that guided walkers past:

• Live performance from Ririe-Woodbury Dance Academy
• A set from musician Morgan Snow of Triggers & Slips
• Cultural performances staged by Cultural Fire Events
• Installations along the trail contributed by Arts Council interns
• A start point at Copper Moose Farm Stand and an end point near Temple Har Shalom

None of that required the trail to be fully open end to end. It required the organizers to know exactly which stretch was usable, which is the same knowledge residents need for a Tuesday evening walk.

The same pattern held earlier in the season. Willow Creek Park's dog pond, the seasonal swimming spot for off-leash dogs connected to this same trail network, reopened right on schedule for Memorial Day weekend, free and open to the public as it is every year. The park itself, 17.5 acres managed by Basin Recreation, added an all-abilities playground in 2023 and still runs its dog park at 24,000 square feet of fenced grass with a floating dock on the pond. In winter, when conditions allow, that same pond gets cleared and mopped into a natural skating rink, no rentals, bring your own skates. None of that has slowed down because a road crew is working four hundred yards away.

What Actually Changes for Someone Living Here

If you're in Silver Springs and use this trail the way most residents do, the version of the story worth carrying into fall and next spring is simpler than the construction alerts suggest:

Heading toward Canyons Village on the east-side trail, expect the restriction to still be active on that segment during active construction months, with the underpass as your crossing point to the west side if you need to keep moving. Heading south toward Willow Creek Park, the dog pond, or into town, you're largely working with the side of the corridor that isn't in the restricted zone. And the whole picture resets every winter, so a walk in January looks nothing like a walk in July, regardless of what the summer detour signs said.

None of this touches vehicle access into the neighborhood itself. The restrictions apply specifically to the pedestrian and bike trails along SR-224, not to the roads residents actually drive to get home.

What's easy to miss, if you only read the construction alerts, is that the corridor's community calendar, the Art on the Trails afternoon, the Memorial Day pond opening, the winter skating window, never asked the road project for permission. It just kept running underneath it, on schedule, in the same stretch of ground.

If you're already living along this trail, that's the whole point. The construction is real and it will be back again next spring. So will everything else.

If you're weighing whether a home near this corridor fits how you actually want to spend your evenings, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks both calendars. INHABIT Park City can walk you through what a specific address in Silver Springs means for daily trail access, season by season. Schedule a Neighborhood Tour and see it for yourself.