If you've driven along State Route 7 near Desert Color this summer, you've probably noticed the graders working a patch of undeveloped desert north of the road and west of River Road. That's not another phase of homes going in. It's the start of a six-mile mountain bike trail park, and it's expected to open sometime this fall.
Here's the part that doesn't make it into the quick version of this story: this new park wasn't designed primarily for the person who wants an easy evening ride after work. It was built to a racing standard, on a calendar built around competition, and paid for with money that didn't come from residents at all. Understanding that changes how you should think about using it.
A Racecourse With A Community Bonus
The park sits at roughly 2,140 feet in elevation and is laid out as a cross-country loop, built in partnership between Desert Color, the Utah Trust Lands Administration, and the Greater Zion Convention and Tourism Office. It was designed alongside the Utah High School Cycling League specifically so the course would meet National Interscholastic Cycling Association racecourse standards, which is a specific technical bar, not just a marketing phrase.
The terrain description from Greater Zion gives a sense of what riding it will actually feel like: rock in shades of purple, yellow, cream and rust, gentle hills mixed with rockier sections, and climbs steady enough to raise your heart rate without turning into a grind. Most of the six miles run blue and green, which in mountain biking terms means flowing and forgiving rather than technical, so a beginner and a competitive racer can share the same trail without either one being miserable.
Daniel Lemich, Desert Color's general manager, put it simply when the project was announced: the community had been working with Washington County for some time to make the bike park a reality, and he called it a wonderful community asset. What's easy to miss in that framing is who actually paid for it. The project runs entirely on transient room tax revenue, the tax collected from hotel stays and short-term rentals in Washington County. Brittany McMichaels, executive director of the Greater Zion Convention and Tourism Office, described it as a case where visitor spending creates lasting benefits for the people who live here.
That's worth sitting with. Residents get a competition-grade trail system without a dollar of it coming from local property or sales tax. But a project engineered for out-of-town race traffic is also going to run on an event calendar, not a resident's calendar.
The Calendar You'll Want To Check Before You Ride
Two events are already locked in. The Utah High School Cycling League will hold its state championships at the new course in October. The following month, the course hosts the inaugural National Interscholastic Cycling Association Western Regional Championship, the first time that event has ever been held anywhere in the western United States. Ten NICA leagues from across the region are expected to send teams.
That's a real distinction for a facility this new, and it's also a practical heads up. On non-event days, the course will be open to the public and available for casual riding. On the weeks around the state championship and the Western Regionals, expect the venue to belong to competitive cycling first. If you're planning a ride out there this fall, it's worth checking the schedule before you load the bikes.
A few other things are settled about the project, and a few aren't yet:
- Location: north of State Route 7, west of River Road, inside the Desert Color community
- Length and difficulty: six miles, built for beginner and intermediate riders
- Funding: Washington County's transient room tax, not resident tax dollars
- Access: open year round, with priority given to scheduled events like October's state championship and November's Western Regionals
- Name: as of this summer's announcements, the park still didn't have an official one. Greater Zion said it would share the name as construction reaches its final stages.
Meanwhile, The Trail You Already Use Is Quietly Getting Bigger
While the Desert Color story has been getting the headlines, a separate and arguably more consequential change has been happening across the rest of the city's trail system, the paved paths most residents actually walk, run, and bike on a normal Tuesday.
St. George's electronic trail counters recorded more than 1.28 million uses across the paved path network in 2025, a 6.6 percent increase over the year before, according to reporting from KUER. Lloyd Sutton, the city's active transportation coordinator, said the network has grown from the 60 to 70 mile range just a few years ago to nearly 90 miles now, with about five miles added in 2025 alone.
Two projects finishing this year matter most for daily use. A connector linking paths on the north and south sides of the Virgin River near Springs Park and Mall Drive broke ground in March and is expected to wrap up this fall. A second project, connecting the city's east and west sides through the Santa Clara River Trail, began construction this summer. Paul Stead, a landscape architect with the city's park planning division, described what that second one actually means once it's done:
"Once that's complete, you'll be able to ride from Ivins all the way to Washington on our trail system. It's pretty amazing."
That's not a small claim. It means a paved path connecting three separate cities end to end, something that doesn't exist yet and won't be finished all at once, but is now an active construction project rather than a long-range idea on a planning map. The Southern Utah Bicycle Alliance is even organizing a 300-foot mural to mark the broader ambition behind it, a long-term plan to eventually link trails from Snow Canyon State Park all the way to Zion National Park.
Downtown Is Still The Missing Piece
Here's the honest gap in an otherwise fast-growing system. Stead was direct about it: the city still lacks real trail connectivity through its own core.
"We feel like it's really important to have connectivity in our core, which is something we're lacking right now. If we could actually get some trails downtown, I think that would really go a long way to connecting everything together."
One idea under discussion is a pedestrian corridor along Tabernacle Street and another along Main Street. Nothing is under construction yet, but it's the piece city planners themselves point to as the missing link between a network that's expanding fast on the edges of town and a downtown core that still asks you to share the road with regular traffic.
What This Actually Adds Up To
Two trail stories are unfolding in St. George at the same time this fall, and they're easy to mix up if you only catch the headlines. One is a flashy, competition-grade bike park at Desert Color, paid for by visitors, designed for racing, and open to residents in the gaps between events. The other is a quieter, resident-funded expansion of the paved path network that's already stitching Ivins to Washington and is on pace for another record year of use.
If you're the kind of person who wants a new place to test technical singletrack and doesn't mind sharing it with high school race teams a couple of weekends a year, keep an eye on Desert Color this fall. If you're the kind of person who just wants your regular walk or ride to reach a little further than it did last year, the bigger news for you is happening along the Virgin River and the Santa Clara River, not at the ribbon cutting everyone's talking about.
Either way, it's a good season to be paying attention to what's opening near you.
If you're settling into St. George and want a neighbor's read on what's changing around town, from trails to the everyday stuff that makes a place feel like home, Nicholaus Realty, LLC is always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
