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The Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail follows the old Union Pacific Park City Branch about 27 miles from Park City down to Echo Reservoir in Summit County, Utah. It leaves town on pavement, then turns to gravel and drops on a gentle rail grade for 14 miles through Silver Creek Canyon beside Interstate 80, with wetland meadows and working farms on either side. At Wanship it picks up the Weber River and follows it through Coalville to Echo State Park. The whole route is open sky, with cottonwoods along the river the only real tree cover. Ridden north it is nearly all downhill; ridden back it is a long, steady climb.
Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail has about 121 to 167 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, running, e-biking, biking, birding, and walking, with June, August, and September the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail!
There is too little deciduous tree cover along the Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail to measure a peak color window. The trail has 8% deciduous coverage, with the majority being Gambel oak.
Freight wagons paid a dollar at a toll gate in Silver Creek Canyon before any railroads came through. Workers opened that road in 1860, and Atkinson Station at its western end served the freighters. Coal drove the first rails. The Coalville and Echo Railroad graded a line in 1869 but never bought rails. The Summit County Railroad finished the job in 1873, a narrow-gauge hauling coal five miles from Coalville to the Union Pacific main line at Echo. By 1880 two railroads raced up Silver Creek toward Park City silver. The narrow-gauge Utah Eastern reached Park City in December 1880. The Union Pacific answered with its own standard gauge Echo and Park City Railway. Coal went up to power the pumps in the silver mines, and ore came down to the main line at Echo. The Utah Eastern lost, was sold in 1887, and had its track pulled by year's end. Union Pacific absorbed the survivor in 1899 as the Park City Branch. The last regular train left Phoston on July 5, 1986. Rails came out in 1989, and Union Pacific deeded the corridor to the State of Utah that May. The state dedicated the Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail State Park in 1992, the first rail trail in Utah. It became a National Recreation Trail in 2006 and entered the Rail-Trail Hall of Fame in 2010. In 2024 Summit County began the process of taking over the trail outside Park City.
Poison Creek Trail
