Pioneer Trail Foundation

The Pioneer Trail

A new cultural walking trail through the heart of Salt Lake City.

The Trail

The Pioneer Trail links dozens of cultural waypoints — from Temple Square to the Museum of Utah — with City Creek Canyon, Memory Grove, and Ensign Peak. Along the route, perennial gardens and public gathering spaces will create a more connected and welcoming experience in downtown Salt Lake City.

Designed to inspire and connect meaningful places through movement, landscape, and storytelling, the Pioneer Trail is a place to consider what pioneering looks like today.

Construction is underway on the first phase of the Pioneer Trail! New landscapes, pedestrian improvements, wayfinding, and public spaces are beginning to transform the route. You can see relevant UDOT updates here.

City Creek Park Corner

City Creek Park Interior

N. State Street

State Street Roundabout

Council Hall

Market Plaza

Memory Grove

Memory Grove Overlook

Canyon Road

Aims of the Trail

Create a World-Class Cultural Walking Trail

The Pioneer Trail will connect and elevate existing cultural sites through thoughtful wayfinding, creating a memorable walking experience for Utahns and visitors from around the world, deeply rooted in Utah’s layered history.

Activate Public Spaces

The Pioneer Trail will revitalize existing public spaces through inspired landscape design, improved pedestrian infrastructure, and welcoming gathering spaces that encourage reflection, dialogue, and movement.

III

Explore Utah’s Pioneering Spirit

The Pioneer Trail invites visitors to encounter Utah’s pioneering spirit anew. Here, pioneering is not fixed in the past. It is a way of moving through the world — crossing unfamiliar ground, imagining new possibilities, and inhabiting the space between what is and what might be.

The Route

Why Now

Utah is changing quickly. Growth is reshaping the state and placing Salt Lake City on a larger stage, bringing new people, new pressures, and renewed questions about what we share and how we move forward together. The Pioneer Trail creates space for reflection, belonging, and cultural connection at a moment of rapid transformation.

The Moment

Phase One

What Comes Next

The Moment

Phase One

What Comes Next

Pioneering lives deep within the bones of Utahns and is not limited to any one religion, generation, or time period. How can a story we inherit help us imagine what comes next?

Team

The Pioneer Trail Foundation began as a grassroots effort led by neighbors on Capitol Hill and has grown into a collaborative civic and cultural initiative supported by leaders across Utah’s government, business, and arts and cultural sectors.

The Foundation has retained Field Operations — the landscape architecture firm behind projects including New York City’s High Line, London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and San Francisco’s Presidio Tunnel Tops — to design the trail experience and public landscape.

The project is also bringing together local horticulturists, growers, restaurateurs, designers, historians, fabricators, and stone suppliers to create a trail deeply rooted in the people, materials, and landscapes of Utah.