Walk the Toll New World trail behind Discovery Ridge on any weekday morning and you will pass a hollowed-out pine that neighborhood kids have turned into a fairy tree, tucking in tiny toys and scattering nuts for the squirrels. A creek runs year round through the canyon bottom. Aspens lean over the path. A moose might be standing in the willows fifty feet off the trail, which is why the signs ask you to keep dogs leashed even though almost nobody does. It feels like it has always been this way and always will be.
It almost wasn't.
The Deal That Nearly Fell Through
At one point, the land that makes up Toll Canyon Open Space, nearly 800 acres wedged between Summit Park and Pinebrook on the south side of I-80, belonged to a private owner with development plans already drawn up. A conservation group called Utah Open Lands negotiated an option to buy the property, and the seller agreed to knock $610,000 off the price to help make it happen, bringing the total to $5.49 million. But the option came with a deadline. The group had to show it had the full purchase price in hand or pledged by December 31 of that year, and after collecting commitments from Summit County, Park City, and the Snyderville Basin Recreation District, organizers were still short roughly $250,000 from individual donors as the deadline closed in. If the money hadn't come together, the property owner at the time, RE Investment Holdings LLC, was set to move forward with development instead.
It came together. That is the only reason the canyon you walk today looks the way it does instead of looking like Discovery Ridge, the newer neighborhood whose rooftops you can now see from the Toll New World switchbacks.
I bring this up not as trivia but because it explains something about how Summit Park actually works. The quiet you take for granted here, the sense that this stretch of the Basin is protected and permanent, was never the default outcome. It was the result of a fundraising deadline that almost wasn't met. Open space in this part of Summit County gets preserved one grant, one bond, one last-minute donor push at a time. And this fall, residents are being asked to make that same kind of choice again, on a different piece of the puzzle.
The Same Question, Again
Basin Recreation, the special district that manages trails, parks, and the Fieldhouse for the Snyderville Basin, spent this past summer trying to convince residents to fund new indoor facilities. In July, the district asked the Summit County Council to put a $150 million, 20-year bond on the November ballot to build a climbing and fitness complex in Jeremy Ranch and an aquatics-focused facility in Silver Creek Village, both aimed at relieving overcrowding at the Fieldhouse. Community members and county councilors pushed back hard on the price tag. Residents pointed out they were already carrying multiple Basin Recreation bonds on top of the district's base tax rate.
So the district's executive board went back to the drawing board. On August 20, the Summit County Council authorized a revised measure for the Election Day ballot: $71 million, less than half the original ask. County Councilor Tonja Hanson told the board she thought the smaller number would land better with voters who'd had what she called sticker shock at the first proposal.
If you live in Summit Park, this vote is yours to decide. Basin Recreation's service boundary covers most of the 84098 zip code, which includes Summit Park, while most of Park City proper, in the 84060 zip code, falls outside it and won't see the measure on its ballot at all. That distinction matters because it means the decision genuinely belongs to this side of the Basin. The people who use these trails and this Fieldhouse are the ones who get to vote on what comes next, the same way Summit Park and Pinebrook residents once got to decide, dollar by dollar, whether Toll Canyon stayed wild.
The bond money would go toward buildings, not trails. It would not touch the trail network directly. But it comes from the same well the canyon purchase did: a recognition that the recreation infrastructure this neighborhood relies on doesn't appear on its own. It gets built, or preserved, because residents choose to pay for it.
What's Actually Underfoot Right Now
None of that history changes what the trails look like on an ordinary Tuesday, so here is where things stand if you're heading out this fall.
The main legal access points into the Toll Canyon system are limited and it is worth knowing them before you drive out:
- Discovery Ridge Trailhead, formerly signed as the Arclyon Trailhead and re-marked with new signage and a restroom back in 2022, sits behind the Discovery Ridge neighborhood and is the recommended starting point given how tight parking is elsewhere in the canyon.
- St. Moritz Terrace in Summit Park offers a second access point, though like most entries into the canyon it sits in a residential area with very limited parking, so plan to arrive early or be ready to adjust.
- The Overeasy Loop, a roughly 5.4-mile route popular with both hikers and mountain bikers, connects into the same network and tends to draw praise for its views without the crowding of the more obvious entry points.
Basin Recreation, which oversees this trail system along with more than 150 miles of trails and roughly 3,000 acres of open space across the wider district, keeps signage and grooming information updated on its trail maps, and that's the source to check before you head out, especially once mud season or snow complicates things.
The Parking Rule People Still Get Wrong
If you're planning to hike up toward Summit Park Peak this winter, there's one detail that trips up longtime residents almost as often as newcomers. Since November 2022, Innsbruck Strasse has had posted "No Winter Parking" restrictions running from November 15 through May 15, and enforcement is active. A first violation typically draws a warning, but repeat parking there during the restricted window can carry an actual fine. Before the signs went up, hikers could park right at the trailhead and snowshoe up in a straight shot. Now, reaching the same trailhead with legal parking in winter means adding about a mile and a half of road walking each way, or arranging a ride.
It's a small rule, but it says something bigger about how thin the margin is between "trail access" and "no trail access" in a neighborhood built into hillsides with narrow residential roads. There is no overflow lot. There is no shuttle. There is a handful of pull-offs, a handful of trailheads, and a lot of people who love this canyon.
Go Now, Vote in November
Late August into September is when the aspens along Toll Creek start to turn, and the canopy that keeps this trail cool through summer becomes the reason it's worth walking even after the heat breaks elsewhere in the valley. That window runs right up against the same calendar the ballot measure lives on. By the time Election Day arrives, the color will likely be gone from the canyon and the Innsbruck Strasse parking ban will already be back in effect for the season.
Somewhere between those two dates, Summit Park residents will decide whether the district that manages this trail system gets $71 million to build the next chapter of what people who live here use every week. It won't touch the canyon itself. But it's built on the same premise that saved it in the first place: nothing about the outdoor character of this neighborhood holds together without someone deciding, actively and on purpose, to pay for it.
If you're the kind of person who wants to understand not just what a neighborhood looks like today but how it got that way and what's shaping it next, that's the conversation I like having. Whether you're weighing a move to Summit Park or you've lived here long enough to remember when you could still park at the base of the peak in January, reach out to Cindy Speering and let's talk about what's actually happening on the ground here.
