Parleys Trail: 3rd West to Fairmont Park

 Parleys Trail is an 8 mile trail from the mouth of Parleys Canyon all the way down to the Jordan River Parkway. Last week we did the section from the Jordan River to 3rd West, so today we continued east from 3rd West. This section of the trail is well, kind of meh. It goes through the city and crosses a lot of roads, including the quite busy State Street and 7th East. It does however pass by quite a few really pretty murals. I have been wanting to do a mural tour for a while now and this, unexpectedly turned out to be a pretty good one for that. This part of the trail has not been 100% finalized yet and there is a temporary shared use detour at the moment. Most of this segment can be viewed riding the S line, but that is the lazy route.

Quick Details:

Length: 4.38 miles out and back.
Trail Type: Connector, out and back.
Difficulty: It is fully paved with a gentle grade. DR2.
Elevation Gain: About 275 feet.
Restroom: Not that I am aware of.
Dogs? Yes, leashed.
Other Info: Accessible via Trax. Use Central Point or any of the stops on the S Line.
Cities: South Salt Lake, Salt Lake City

To Get Here:

Take i15 to exit 303, 3300 South and head east, but immediately move to the left. Turn left on 3rd west. Turn right on Haven Ave and find somewhere to park. We parked in the RC Willey lot, even though it had signs saying for employees and customers only we figured since they were closed we wouldn’t be a nuisance. But if you are worried about that I think you can park on Haven Ave.

Neat mural we drove by on 3rd West (Passenger Seat Photography (PSP)).

The Trail:

The fish mural we saw at the end of the previous segment. We opted to skip the ~485 feet along and across 3rd west to the specific point we left off last time. I think this was close enough.

Heading east on Haven Ave. This is part of the temporary “shared use” detour route. This part of the trail has not been fully fleshed out yet.

I absolutely adore this moose mural!

Whale mural on the RC Willey building.

This is a fun mural.

Had to do a panoramic to get the whole thing straight on.

From the front the horse looks like it is having s stroke. Once we realized it wrapped around it made more sense.

Another fun mural.

Well this is a sign we have never seen before.

Trax line crossing. It does have a signal and flashes lights and rings a bell when the train is approaching but, you know, be safe and look both ways as the sign says.

Continuing east along Haven Ave.

This is a pretty mural. Sadly the author of the quote is hidden by cars.

This must have been an important person to someone, unfortunately I don’t know who it is.

Really fun and colorful mural on the Delvies Plastics Inc. building. We both liked that they integrated their plastic into it.

Mural on the former Utah Bike Collective building. Looks like they moved to 9th south,

Monkey on a bike.

Nice memorial.

Transform yourself ride a bike. Cute.

Kind of Dr. Seuss looking.

The east end of the building.

Well, holy crap. My walk by panoramic actually worked. It’s not perfect, at all. But I caught the whole building.

Here we will cross West Temple, and then head north for a bit. There is a signal you can activate, but this road was not very busy.

Old water tower.

Pretty bird mural.

Mural across the street.

Heading north on West Temple. Oh, the flag says this is a Creative Industries Zone for South Salt Lake Arts Council. I guess that explains all of the murals.

More murals.

I really like this buffalo one too.

Before long you will hit, and will have to cross, the S Line. Then the trail will continue east again. And that will conclude the temporary detour through this part.

Heading east again.

This one is cute.

On the other side.

I don’t think this was a sanctioned mural.

Crossing at Main Street. The trail wiggles slightly to the left here.

Mountains.

The old Classic Bowling Center was torn down for apartments. But, they kept and modified the old classic sign. More on that on the way back.

Fun motorcycle passenger.

State Street crossing. Oof.

The modified sign again.

Continuing east.

Another mural. Again, I am not sure if this is a sanctioned one.

The S Line is single track trough most of the way.

Another mural. Getting some octopus vibes here.

3rd East, which is a smaller crossing. I am not sure if I caught all of them (looks like I missed 2nd East), but man, there were a bunch.

Continuing east along a row of apartments.

Another long mural.

Near the end of it. Lots of pretty color.

4th East.

Fun looking park. It is called Promise Park.

South Salt Lake City sign. Whelp, I guess we are in Salt Lake City now. The Sugarhouse neighborhood respectfully.

Continuing east. Skipped getting a shot of 5th East.

A vandalized and corrected mural. Graffiti in general sucks, but it’s a real dick move to cover up someone else’s artwork.

Another big mural.

Wow! Super pretty.

Then we get some silly.

This is fun.

Another big building with a full mural.

Wow.

Neat.

Okay, holy crap, this is good.

Random art.

Another mural.

Another crossing at 6th East.

This mural has a lot going on.

7th East. This is another very busy road, but there is a signal to help you cross safely.

The S Line coming down. I was curious why it looks so different from the Trax trains, and I guess it’s because the S Line is considered a streetcar instead. Huh.

Lake Street.

8th East.

Artworks that resembles trains. Kind of reminds me of the crossing of the trains at Golden Spike National Historic Site.

Closer to each one.

Random rock stack and some bird murals behind it.

Hawk Watch.

Closer look at the hawk mural, plus a random house looking statue.

A couple spots offer a view of the mountains. Looks like I skipped a shot of 9th east too.

Railroad rail art.

Fairmont Park. We decided this was a good spot to park for doing the next segment of the trail, so we decided to turn around at the next street.

The end of the S Line.

McClelland Street. We decided this would be our turn around point. According to the official map: https://www.parleystrail.org/map (outside link) you would continue up to Highland Dr. Then skootch north to Wilmington Ave, east for a bit, then north into Hidden Hollow. However playing around on google I see another option to go a little less far along Wilmington Ave and cut to the west side of Hidden Hollow, then east through it which I think would be a little more enjoyable.

According to this sign the S Line, opened in 2013 stands over exactly where an old rail line ran over a century ago. Wow, that is kind of cool.

The railroad tracks art again.

Oh, we didn’t notice this on the way in. There is a monument to a lot of the industry that Sugarhouse was known for. Candy, Lumbar, Furniture, Railroad, Ice, Farming and Sugar beats. There is one more I can’t quite make out.

Heading back west. For the most part the S line is a single track, but there are a couple parts that are double track which I think was done to allow for 2 street cars to be able to pass each other in the middle. And I just confirmed with the schedule that it runs twice as often on weekdays than Sundays.

The S Line stations are kind of cute and small.

9th East.

The little train art again. After reading the sign at the end, all the train related art makes sense.

8th East.

Found a Parleys Trail sign.

I noticed a couple areas with these little tables for picnicking.

Neat old picket fence. I wonder how old it is.

7th East. There are lighted crossing signals at all of the crossings except for 1.

The very busy mural.

Another little picnic area.

6th East.

Asparagus mural and a stack of railroad ties.

Fun mural.

They seem to like ducks.

Getting a bit of a sunset.

5th East.

Entering South Salt Lake.

4th East. Like I said, almost all of the crossings have signals. Some of these smaller roads you don’t even need to bother with it.

Cotton candy clouds with the sunset.

Another little S Line station. We are back to where there is a twin pair of tracks.

3rd East.

2nd East.

More sunset.

Ritz Classic Plaza. It’s nice they reused the old neon sign for the torn down bowling alley.

Closer look at the neon sign.

Here is what it looked like in 2014 and 2015 (courtesy Google Maps). The current version shows up in 2017 so it had to be made over between 2015 and 2017. The middle bits used to spin changing between classic and bowling I don’t remember if they used to light up or not. It does not appear to spin anymore and says classic on both sides now. I did some digging and found this article (outside link) that says it closed in 2015. It says it was opened in 1958. 57 years is pretty impressive. I like that the sign was preserved for the most part. It looks like the city zoned it for that. Go South Salt Lake!

The State Street Crossing. Oof, the signal took forever. But it is a major artery so I get we are not a priority.

The Ritz Classic sign again.

More sunset.

Major St. doesn’t have any crossing signals, but its a tiny side street.

Another historical sign at this S Line stop. It looks like the main sign might be the same as the one on the other end. The pillars say Industry, Lumber, and Farming.

Main Street.

Not the best shot, but I missed this mural on the way up.

It’s nice that this section has these lights.

Back to West Temple, and the temporary detour. So we’re going to hang a left.

Aside from that electrical box it seems like they could fit the trail through there. I did notice on Google maps though that there is a mess of train tracks closer to 3rd West. So I am not sure how they are going to wrangle that part, or if we will have the detour forever.

Beehive Distilling. I like the neon sign. Sadly they are not open on Sundays, or Mondays. But, you could pop in for a pint and a bite any other day.

Cute little cartoon character on a barrel inside.

The buffalo mural again.

Continuing along West Temple.

I totally missed that this mural extended onto this side of it. It’s pretty.

Both sides.

The West Temple crossing. This one doesn’t have any signals, but it does have a flasher you can activate to signal to drivers you are crossing. Although it did not appear to work today. Luckily it’s not a super busy road.

Back to the old Bicycle Collective building.

Continuing west along Haven Ave.

The Trax crossing.

The fun Southern Utah mural again.

The moose mural.

Looking northwest across 3rd West towards the previous section we did.

Well, it was not my favorite, but I think I liked it just a little bit better than the previous section. I did not love all of the crossings, but at least it wasn’t next to the freeway the whole time. Considering it is a trail through the heart of the city, it wasn’t terribly busy either. I also really loved all of the murals and art along the way. I think we will like the next section more. 3 out of 10 squirrels today.

As for difficulty, it is completely paved with a gentle grade. DR2.

Dogs are allowed, but should remain leashed.