On September 23, 2025, a small crowd gathered on Thaynes Canyon Drive at 4:30 in the afternoon to cut a ribbon on a sidewalk. That is not typically an event. But this particular stretch of pavement had been talked about since 2019, when Park City first landed state transportation funding to fix a gap that had bothered the neighborhood for years: Thaynes Canyon Drive, running through one of Park City's longest-established residential canyons, had no sidewalk at all.
Now it does. A 12-foot wide, tree-lined pathway runs along the road, tying into new sidewalks on Snow Creek Drive that push through to the McLeod Trailhead. City Councilmember Jeremy Rubell, who lives in the area, told KPCW the neighborhood had already taken to it: "It's been amazing the adoption of this path already." He added that it connects walkers straight across State Route 224 into Snow Creek Plaza and the McLeod Creek Trail.
That's the good part of the story, and it's the part every neighborhood page about Thaynes Canyon will tell you. What they won't tell you is why, a few weeks after that ribbon cutting, the city started pouring concrete foundations for a 600-foot protective net along the exact same stretch of pathway.
The sidewalk runs along a driving range, and that was already a problem
Phase I of the pathway follows the south side of Thaynes Canyon Drive, right along the perimeter of the Park City Golf Club's driving range. That routing wasn't an accident. It was the only practical corridor available. But it meant putting pedestrians on foot directly alongside a fairway that had, for years, been sending golf balls into the surrounding neighborhood.
At a June 26, 2025 council meeting, resident Cortney Johanson described the problem in blunt terms:
"This has been a significant problem for us. Golf balls hitting our houses, breaking our windows, hitting our landscapers. Our cleaning ladies have been hit while sweeping porches. Our kids have been hit."
The council didn't need convincing. With a new sidewalk about to put more people, on foot, closer to the range than ever before, the city approved a variance for a net that exceeds the area's standard 28-foot height limit. What's going up is a 600-foot-long net that tapers from 25 feet at one end to 50 feet at the other, following the natural slope of the land. Construction happened in two stages: foundation work in mid-October 2025, taking eight to ten days, followed by installation of the net itself in early December. The city has also committed to planting trees and shrubs along the base to soften how it reads from the street.
It's worth sitting with the order of operations here. The city didn't build the net first and the sidewalk second. It built the sidewalk, which made an old hazard newly urgent, and the net followed. That sequence is the whole story of how Thaynes Canyon's infrastructure gets built right now: one fix surfaces the next problem, and the fix for that one gets sized by what residents will actually tolerate.
Phase II just got smaller, and that wasn't the original plan
The same dynamic showed up again in the summer of 2026, this time on the other end of the project. Phase II was supposed to extend the pathway along Three Kings Drive with a 12-foot shared-use path, connecting the completed Thaynes Canyon Drive section all the way to the base of Park City Mountain Resort. That was the plan the city had been designing toward since Phase I broke ground.
At a Park City Council meeting on June 25, 2026, staff walked that back. Transportation Planning Manager Julia Collins told the council that resident feedback favored a narrower, lower-impact option, and staff recommended installing a 6-foot sidewalk instead of the wider shared-use path. A temporary crosswalk is in place through fall 2026 while the city works out the permanent design.
That's a meaningful downgrade in scope, not a rounding error. A 12-foot shared-use path is built for bikes and pedestrians moving in both directions at speed. A 6-foot sidewalk is built for people walking. The city's own transportation staff is telling you, in the width of concrete they're pouring, how much visible infrastructure this canyon is willing to absorb.
Here's how the full timeline actually lines up, phase by phase:
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| UDOT awards initial funding for Thaynes Canyon/Three Kings improvements | 2019 |
| Phase I groundbreaking | Spring 2025 |
| Phase I ribbon cutting (12-foot pathway, Thaynes Canyon Dr and Snow Creek Dr) | September 23, 2025 |
| Driving range net: foundation work | Mid-October 2025 |
| Driving range net: installation complete | Early December 2025 |
| City conducts alternatives analysis for Phase II | Spring 2026 |
| Council recommends scaling Phase II from 12-foot path to 6-foot sidewalk | June 25, 2026 |
| Temporary crosswalk on Three Kings Drive | In place through fall 2026 |
| Phase II target construction start | Spring 2027 |
None of this is administrative trivia. If you live on or near Thaynes Canyon Drive, this timeline is the reason your street looks different than it did a year ago, and it previews what your commute to the mountain will look like once Three Kings Drive gets its turn.
Where the path actually takes you
Strip away the council minutes and the practical question is simpler: what can you now walk to that you couldn't before? The new pathway crosses SR-224 and lands in Snow Creek Plaza, which has quietly become the closest walkable cluster of everyday spots for Thaynes Canyon.
- Five5eeds, at 1600 Snow Creek Drive, is the Australian-inspired breakfast and brunch spot known for its hotcake, a single oversized pancake piled with mixed berries and lemon mascarpone. It's the kind of place that works before a tee time or after a morning on the McLeod Creek Trail.
- Twisted Fern, at 1300 Snow Creek Drive, has been serving New American food with Mediterranean influences since 2017, with a menu built around vegan and gluten-free options.
- Teriyaki Grill, at 1400 Snow Creek Drive, has been in Park City since 1997, founded by retired NFL player Mike Keim and his wife Tiffany as a fast, healthy alternative to typical grab-and-go food.
Past the plaza, the pathway ties into the McLeod Creek Trail itself, a paved route that starts near the Snow Creek Medical Center and winds along the creek through wooded sections and over footbridges before opening into meadows near Old Ranch Road. It's popular enough for dog walking and evening runs that anyone who's used it after work already knows to watch for foot traffic near sunset.
The golf course is still the anchor, and the parking has changed
The Park City Golf Club at 1541 Thaynes Canyon Drive remains the neighborhood's other defining feature. It's a public, 18-hole course built in 1962 and designed by William Neff, and for the 2026 season rates run from $36 to $122 depending on the round and time of year. Tee times can be booked nine days out online or seven days out by phone.
One thing the new pathway quietly erased: informal overflow parking. Before construction, golfers sometimes parked on an unmarked dirt patch bordering the driving range. Park City engineer John Robertson explained to KPCW that the area was never a formal lot, and that the city's paving standards mean it won't come back once the pathway is finished. If you're headed to the course on a busy weekend, that dirt overflow option is gone, and parking near the clubhouse is now genuinely limited.
The throughline
Thaynes Canyon didn't just get a sidewalk last year. It got a live demonstration of how the city is willing to build in a neighborhood this established: incrementally, in response to what actually happens once the concrete is down, and scaled back the moment residents push back on size. The Phase I pathway solved a decades-old access gap and immediately exposed a golf-ball hazard nobody had fully addressed. The fix for that hazard now stands along the driving range as a tapered net running the length of the fairway. And the lesson from both has already reshaped Phase II before a single foot of Three Kings Drive gets touched.
If you've walked the new stretch, you've probably noticed the net already in place. What's still ahead is the narrower sidewalk headed for Three Kings Drive, targeted for construction in spring 2027, and how much more of the daily walk to the mountain it reshapes once it's built.
Questions about how any of this affects a specific property in Thaynes Canyon, from driving range setbacks to what's ahead for Three Kings Drive access? Miriam Noel knows this neighborhood block by block. Schedule a personalized consultation to talk through what it means for your home or your search.
