The Provo River Parkway is the most-used piece of outdoor infrastructure in Utah Valley, and it is genuinely unusual: fifteen continuous paved miles that start on the shore of Utah Lake, run through the middle of a city of 115,000 people, and finish in a mountain canyon at the foot of a 607-foot waterfall. You can commute on it, race on it, push a stroller on it, or ride it as a legitimate scenic route.
It is also, in 2026, a trail with three separate construction stories attached to it, a stalled extension at its top end, and a rail-trail history most of the people using it have never heard.
Trail overview
- Length: about 15 miles (published as 15 to 15.2)
- Ends: Utah Lake State Park (west) to Vivian Park, Provo Canyon (east)
- Surface: asphalt the entire way
- Width: roughly 8 to 10 feet through the city; about 16 feet in the canyon
- Elevation gain: roughly 750 to 850 feet end to end, almost all in the canyon
- Category: rail-trail, in part
- Uses: walking, running, cycling, inline skating, horseback riding in places
- Motor vehicles: prohibited
- Dogs: on leash
The route, section by section
The Parkway is really three trails wearing one name, and knowing which one you want saves a lot of driving.
Utah Lake to downtown Provo (the flat end)
From Utah Lake State Park the trail follows the river north and east through parks and residential Provo. This is the flattest, widest-feeling and least dramatic section, and it is the right choice for young children, strollers, wheelchairs and anyone who wants distance without climbing. It passes Fort Utah Park and Paul Ream Wilderness Park, both of which have parking.
This end of the trail is changing. The Provo River Delta Restoration Project rebuilt the river's mouth into Utah Lake and added an entirely new trail network — Skipper Bay, the observation tower, the old channel — reached from Delta Gateway Park on Lakeshore Drive. As part of that project, Utah County plans to repave the Parkway from Lakeshore Drive down to Utah Lake State Park once the delta's new boat ramps and fishing platforms are finished, which the project put at around mid-summer 2026. Expect the west end to be better than the maps suggest, and to have been briefly worse while the paving happens.
Downtown to the canyon mouth (the city section)
Through the middle of Provo and into Orem, the trail negotiates streets, crosses under and over roads, and runs alongside University Avenue toward the mouth of Provo Canyon. This is the section with surface street crossings and narrow underpasses, and it is the least pleasant part to ride quickly. It is also the most useful part, because it is what makes the Parkway a commuting route rather than a recreation loop.
Occasional closures happen here; an undercrossing near Geneva Road has been intermittently affected. If you are riding end to end, budget for a detour and follow signed alternatives rather than improvising through traffic.
Provo Canyon: the canyon mouth to Vivian Park (the good bit)
At Orem's 800 North the trail leaves the city and turns up the canyon, and everything changes. The pavement widens to about 16 feet, road crossings nearly vanish, the river runs beside you, and the canyon walls close in. This is the seven-mile stretch people mean when they talk about the Parkway.
It passes Nunn's Park, Canyon Glen, Bridal Veil Falls, Mount Timpanogos Park and finishes at Vivian Park. The grade is steady and gentle enough that the climb barely registers on the way up and delivers a long, easy descent coming back.
The rail-trail nobody mentions
The reason a canyon this steep has a wide, gently graded paved path running up it is not that somebody bulldozed one. It is a railroad grade.
The Heber Creeper tourist railroad ran through Provo Canyon past Bridal Veil Falls until the late 1980s, on a line that had been carrying freight and passengers long before that. When service through the canyon ended, the tracks came out and the corridor became trail — which is why the canyon section is wide, why its gradient is so consistent, and why it hugs the river rather than the highway.
The railroad still exists at the far end. It runs today as the Heber Valley Railroad out of Heber City; it just does not come down the canyon any more. Our guide to Heber Valley and Midway covers what it does now.
Why the parking lot is called Nunn's Park
Ride the canyon section and you pass a pipeline, a diversion, a couple of severe-looking industrial structures and a parking lot named after somebody. They are all one story, and it is a bigger one than the canyon lets on.
In 1897, about four and a half miles up Provo Canyon, the Telluride Power Company and Lucien L. Nunn started generating hydroelectric power at what became known as Nunn's Station. According to the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, it was the first high-voltage, long-distance alternating-current transmission system in the world — and it sent its power 32 miles across the mountains to the mining town of Mercur, in Tooele County. Nunn had earlier persuaded George Westinghouse to develop the alternating-current system that made it possible.
Demand outran the station almost immediately. Nunn moved the operation down to the mouth of the canyon, where a greater drop meant more pressure on the turbines. The new generating station was designed by Fay Devaux "Fred" Olmsted, a Michigan-trained engineer, along with a twelve-foot-square wooden flume that hugged the canyon wall and carried river water to a cement box more than 300 feet above the powerhouse. Olmsted died of tuberculosis before it was finished, and the plant was named after him.
The Olmsted Power Plant opened in 1904 and ran for 111 years. It housed the Telluride Institute, one of only two original electrical-engineering training programs in the United States, where students lived on the upper floors. The powerhouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. A replacement plant, a roughly $42 million partnership between the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of the Interior and the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, began generating in 2018 beside the original, which was slated to become a museum. For a number of years before Orem built Mt. Timpanogos Park, the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival was held on the Olmsted grounds.
So: the diversion you ride past feeds a plant that has been making electricity since before Utah had paved canyon roads, and the parking lot most visitors use for Bridal Veil Falls is named for the man who ran the first long-distance AC transmission line on earth. A roadside marker titled Let There Be Light stands near the canyon mouth, and the Parkway is one of the ways to reach it.
The Bridal Veil bottleneck, and the work fixing it
The single most congested point on fifteen miles of trail is the base of Bridal Veil Falls, and there is a specific reason for it.
An avalanche in January 2023 buried the base of the falls, pushed snow onto US-189 and destroyed the wide footbridge that had served as the natural gathering point. What replaced it was a narrow, makeshift bridge — so a regional cycling corridor and the busiest pedestrian attraction in the canyon now share one pinch point. Bike-and-pedestrian conflicts here are routine, not occasional.
Utah County's $7 million reconstruction of the Bridal Veil area, which began in September 2025, is designed to fix that geometry: separated bike and pedestrian paths, a rebuilt trail at the base, a park and pavilion on the opposite bank, and expanded parking.
For trail users the important detail is the second phase. Phase 2, scheduled from July 2026, reroutes bike traffic across the river around the work zone and closes the trail at the base of the falls for reconstruction. Completion dates in circulation disagree — the county's spokesman described late summer or early fall 2027, matching a two-year framing from a September 2025 start, while at least one outlet printed October 2026. Check Utah County's current notice before planning a through-ride. Our Bridal Veil Falls guide has the full picture.
The extension that stalled
Ride to Vivian Park and the pavement simply stops, four miles short of Deer Creek Reservoir. That is not an oversight.
A 3.5-mile extension from Vivian Park to Deer Creek Dam was approved in 2022 with a budget around $34 million and an initial completion target of early 2023. UDOT's own project materials are unusually candid about why it is hard: the alignment has to thread between the highway, the river, the railroad and steep canyon walls, across slopes with existing geological instability. Building a trail there means retaining walls, not paving.
The project has since been listed as on hold, with the construction schedule unknown.
That is worth knowing before you plan around it, because the completed extension appears on aspirational maps and in older write-ups as though it exists. It does not. Vivian Park is the end of the pavement, and has been for a long time.
Best access points
West to east:
- Utah Lake State Park — the west terminus. Entrance fee; full facilities.
- Delta Gateway Park (311 N Lakeshore Drive) — Provo's newest park and the gateway to the delta trail network.
- Fort Utah Park (200 N Geneva Road) — west Provo, free parking, good flat-riding start.
- Paul Ream Wilderness Park (1600 W 500 N) — quiet, shaded, central.
- Canyon View Park / Interchange Park area (800 North) — the standard start for a canyon ride, at the canyon mouth in Orem.
- Nunn's Park — first major canyon parking, and the access point for Bridal Veil and for winter ice climbing.
- Canyon Glen Park (1501 E Provo Canyon Road) — picnic pavilions, restrooms, and the dirt-trail connections.
- Mount Timpanogos Park — upper canyon, picnic sites.
- Vivian Park — the east terminus, and the takeout for river tubing in summer.
Most canyon parks have restrooms, water and picnic tables in season. City-side parks vary.
Naming the river correctly
This trips up visitors and even some local write-ups, and getting it wrong makes fishing and rafting advice useless.
The Provo River is described in three named stretches:
- Upper Provo — above Jordanelle Reservoir, in the Uintas.
- Middle Provo — between Jordanelle Dam and Deer Creek Reservoir, through Heber Valley. This is the blue-ribbon tailwater fishery.
- Lower Provo — below Deer Creek Dam, through Provo Canyon and down to Utah Lake.
The water running beside the Parkway is the Lower Provo, not the Middle Provo. If a source tells you the Parkway follows the Middle Provo, it is describing a river forty minutes away over a mountain pass.
How to use it
Walking and running
The city section is the practical everyday choice, and it is what makes the Parkway function as neighborhood infrastructure. For a scenic run, park at the canyon mouth and go up: the grade is honest, the turnaround is obvious, and the return is downhill. Our running routes guide has the loops.
Cycling
Three routes cover most of what people actually ride:
- Canyon mouth to Bridal Veil Falls and back — about 8 miles, the classic family ride.
- Canyon mouth to Vivian Park and back — about 14 miles, the best value for effort in the valley.
- End to end and back — roughly 30 miles, mostly for fitness rather than scenery, because of the city crossings.
Keep right, call your pass, and slow down through the Bridal Veil area. It is the one place on the trail where a fast line is genuinely antisocial.
Families
The lower half is the answer, plus the delta trails at the west end. The canyon is beautiful but carries the fastest cyclists on the corridor.
Connections
The Parkway is the southern anchor of the Golden Spoke, a regional network linking more than 100 miles of paved trail between Provo and Ogden — which means that in principle you can ride from Utah Lake to Weber County without leaving pavement. Locally it meets the Murdock Canal Trail and the University Parkway side path, and in the canyon it touches dirt: the Great Western Trail and the north Provo Canyon section of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail leave from near Canyon Glen. Those are not beginner connections and are covered in our mountain biking guide.
Season by season
Spring is loud and green, with the river at runoff volume. Expect debris on the pavement after storms and a genuinely cold canyon microclimate in the mornings.
Summer is peak use. The canyon is shaded for much of the day and noticeably cooler than the valley floor, which is why the Parkway is the default summer exercise route. Go early. Our summer activities guide covers the rest.
Fall is the best time to ride it. The maples turn in the canyon, the light gets long, and the crowds thin after Labor Day.
Winter is the section most people write off and should not. The city stretch is generally cleared and rideable. The canyon section is not plowed, but foot traffic compacts it, and with microspikes it is a fine winter walk. The falls freeze. Avalanche paths cross the canyon — the 2023 slide reached the highway and the trail — so check conditions after storm cycles rather than assuming a paved trail is a safe trail.
Safety and etiquette
- This is a shared corridor, not a bike path. The single biggest conflict is speed differential at the Bridal Veil pinch point.
- Announce passes. "On your left" prevents most of the collisions that happen here.
- Leashes short. A retractable lead across a 16-foot trail is a tripwire.
- Lights after dusk. Sections of the canyon are genuinely dark and the trail is unlit.
- Do not enter the river casually. The Lower Provo runs cold and pushy in spring; the tubing season below Vivian Park is a supervised, seasonal activity with outfitters, not an improvisation.
- Check current closures. Between the Bridal Veil rebuild and the delta repaving, two ends of this trail are moving targets in 2026.
Related guides
- Bridal Veil Falls: Complete Visitor Guide
- Utah Lake: The Complete Guide
- Murdock Canal Trail
- Running Routes in Provo
- Mountain Biking in Provo
- Best Parks in Provo
Frequently Asked Questions
How long is the Provo River Parkway?
Where does the Provo River Parkway start and end?
Can I bike the Provo River Parkway?
Is the Provo River Parkway paved the whole way?
Is the trail good for strollers and wheelchairs?
Why does the trail stop at Vivian Park instead of continuing to Deer Creek?
Are dogs allowed on the Provo River Parkway?
Does the Parkway connect to other trails?