Fort Cedar Railroad Trail in Cedar City: History Meets Recreation

A local salvage yard operator called to say a bronze plaque had been brought in to sell as scrap metal. The plaque had been cut into nine pieces. It belonged to the Iron Foundry Monument, a pyramid of stone first put up in 1933 at the northwest corner of Main Street Park. The monument fell apart during a move in the early 2000s, and its pieces went to the cemetery for storage. The large metal ball from its top turned up inside a fireplace, as St. George News reported in its coverage of the trail dedication.

The monument now stands along the Fort Cedar Railroad Trail. The recovered original is on one side and a reconstructed replica is attached to the other. The rest of the trail came together the same way. The corridor was a rail spur the railroad no longer used. The bike park sits on what its builder calls "a giant, flat ditch full of weeds." And the two pioneer markers along the path were each moved from somewhere else to get there.

A Mile of Industrial Road, Seven Years in the Making

The trail runs the length of Industrial Road, from 300 West to Airport Road. Its easternmost section was finished in time for a ribbon cutting on July 6, 2026. That section includes the best place to start, a new parking lot with restrooms and water fountains between 300 West and 400 West. The city's trail-system map sign lists the route as 1.1 miles long.

Councilmember R. Scott Phillips told the crowd of about 60 that the project began a little over seven years ago. He remembered the timing because one of his first agenda items as a new council member was approving the purchase of the land the railroad used to sit on. He put the total at about $6.5 million and was careful about what that figure covers. "That's not just the trail – that's the road, the infrastructure, the sewer, the water, the street lights," he said. So the paved path is one part of a larger rebuild of this stretch of town, which Phillips called a long-held hope "to take this part of the city and help revitalize it."

Money came from several places. James Leavitt of U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy's office said former Rep. Chris Stewart was instrumental in getting $3 million in federal funding for the project. Cedar City Council minutes also record $200,000 in Utah Outdoor Recreation grant funds received for the Fort Cedar Railroad Trail.

The Spur That Started Cedar City's Tourist Trade

The corridor was the end of Union Pacific's Cedar City Branch, which ran from Lund. UtahRails gives the dates.

• June 26, 1923: Official opening ceremony for the branch.
• May 15, 1925: General travel service begins.
• May 13, 1961: First season without Union Pacific passenger trains to Cedar City.
• July 5, 2013: Federal regulators approve abandoning the final mile into Cedar City. Freight customers west of I-15 continued to be served.

The branch was planned to haul livestock, hay, grain, coal, iron ore and other minerals. It was also meant to carry visitors to the nearby parks, and Union Pacific ran seasonal park-tour passenger service on it.

Mayor Steve Nelson spoke to that second purpose at the dedication. "The Parry brothers had an idea that they would bring people into Cedar City on a train down to the depot, put them on buses and take them to the national parks, and that was kind of the founding or the original beginning of our tourist base in Iron County," he said. "This rail spur served that for a lot of years and brought a lot of economic value into our community."

The line that once carried visitors through town on their way to the national parks is now a path people use for its own sake. Nelson made the same point about visitors today: "(visitors) will stay for multiple days if we can provide things for them to do."

Two Pioneer Markers That Moved to Meet the Trail

The rail history is told through the trail's name. The older history sits right on the path, in two Daughters of Utah Pioneers markers that the city relocated and restored.

The first is the Fort Cedar marker. On Friday, February 27, 2026, Schmidt Construction and city employees moved it 850 feet, along with a solid iron ore rock weighing 35 tons. The move took a specialized crane and heavy equipment, according to Iron County Today. The marker had stood at the southwest corner of the original fort. It now sits along the trail just west of the Interstate 15 underpass.

Iron County Today's account of what the marker commemorates is worth reading at the stop. In November 1851, 35 men from Parowan settled Cedar City and got through their first winter in an encampment of wagon boxes and sagebrush walls. By 1853 they had built a fort 100 rods square. Its walls were nine feet high and three feet thick at the base, and they enclosed 63 acres with 120 city lots laid out inside. The paper calls this setting the marker's "third and final home" and says the trail was originally known as the Coal Creek Trail.

The second marker is the Iron Foundry Monument from the opening story. Aleese Cardon, chair of the Cedar City Historic Preservation Commission, said the commission learned in 2019 that the monument was missing. She and another person then went looking for the pieces. The plaque surfaced four years later at the salvage yard. A separate informational plaque near the monument now tells the full story.

Linda White, president of the Iron County chapter of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, said the chapter has over 300 members. She told St. George News what she hopes trail users will do: "stop for a few minutes and feel the spirit and read the history of the Fort Cedar Monument and the Iron Foundry Monument."

Between 400 and 600 West, a Ditch That Fought Back

The newest stop opened Saturday, October 3, 2026. The Cedar City Bike Park sits just south of Industrial Road between 400 and 600 West, right beside the paved trail, as St. George News reported from the grand opening. Better Bike Parks built it in about 12 weeks. Owner Christian Peper said the site "used to be just a giant, flat ditch full of weeds, and we had no idea that there was a ton of water coming into this property as well."

The strip was hard to work with. Peper said it is about 50 feet wide, squeezed between the paved trail and the fences of private property, with telephone poles and lines overhead. The ground was flat, so his crew brought in a bulldozer to create about five feet of grade from top to bottom and give riders some downhill flow. Summer monsoon storms showed the site held far more water than anyone expected, so the crew added a drainage ditch down the middle. Peper said it is one of the largest bike parks his company has built.

The park has two sections. The east side is a paved asphalt pump track suited to smaller bikes, including pedal-free push bikes. The west side has ramps, hills and jumps for more experienced riders. At the July dedication, parks and outdoor facilities head Anthony Pearson said the asphalt section would be open to skateboards and scooters as well as bikes.

Signs posted at the park list its two main rules:

1. No motorized vehicles. Peper said electric motorcycles, ATVs and RC cars had already been seen on the course, and he gave the Cedar City Police Department's number, 435-586-2956, for reporting them.
2. Keep the dirt damp while riding. A hose hooked to a valve beside the trail uses the city's public-access water. Peper also suggested sweeping rocks and debris off the lines when there's time.

Peper explained why the second rule matters:

"If it's damp, when you ride on the dirt, it ends up getting more concrete and smoother. It's not putting up dust in the neighborhood. It's a really good way to make your park smooth and fast and fun, and not just turn into like a crumbly pile of junk over time."

Phillips put the bike park's cost at about $265,000, paid for with city funds, Recreation, Arts and Parks tax funds, and state grants. The Cedar City Council agenda for March 25, 2026 listed a $245,000 design-build proposal from Better Bike Parks for the pump track and bike park. The sources don't explain the gap between the proposal in March and the figure Phillips gave in October.

What Hasn't Arrived Yet

The corridor is still being filled in. After the bike park opened, Phillips listed what is still in the works. Benches are coming so parents can sit and watch their children. A large play train engine is planned on 800 West. In the next phase, the city plans a pollinator garden between 600 West and 800 West, and he said the city is writing a grant for it now. Pearson has described the train as a play structure with slides and a few climbing features. Peper said the city plans to add two water spigots with hoses along the line so riders can keep the jumps damp. None of these has a published completion date.

Pearson called the mile of new trail a step toward better connecting the city's trail network. The play train will join a 1933 monument recovered in nine pieces and a fort marker moved 850 feet along a corridor the Union Pacific once ran. For now, the trail starts at the parking lot between 300 West and 400 West, with restrooms, water fountains and a hose waiting at the dirt jumps.

Industrial Road now has a trail, a bike park and two restored pioneer markers along it. If you'd like to know which streets are close to the trail or to the planned train and garden, Tayler Christensen and the Christensen Team are happy to walk through the map with you.