Murray Park: Creekside Loop

Murray Park is a large park in well, Murray. It features you typical park amenities, fields, pavilions, playgrounds, etc. It also features pretty mountain views and Little Cottonwood Creek. My friend group has picked up our weekly walks again and we ended up here. We kind of squirreled a few times today, and did kind of a wonky loop that was mostly along the south side next to the creek. We enjoy this park and do it fairly often.

Quick Details:

Length: We did a 1.24 miles loop de loop. There are longer and shorter options.
Trail Type: Loop de loop. Longer loop options.
Difficulty: We went off the paved trail a few times today, so DR3. But there are paved DR2 options.
Elevation Gain: We did about 40 feet.
Restroom: Several, but I am not sure if any of them are year round.
Dogs? Yes, leashed. Please clean up after your furry friends.
Other Info:

To Get Here:

From i15 take the exit for 5300 South, head east. to State Street. From here there are multiple entrances into the park, the one we always use goes like this: Just after State Tree turn left into the old Best Buy complex*, follow that to the end and hang a right.

*note, as I understand it the complex is coming down and residential units are coming in so it could be quite different once that starts and or finishes. 

The Trail:

I love this little artsy archway over the road.

Crossing Little Cottonwood Creek, looking downstream.

Upstream.

The park.

The creek widens out to a little pond here. but right now, before the run off starts its just a stream running through a dry patch.

Mountain views.

The little pond again.

We noticed that there appeared to be some new interpretive signs back there.

We found another bridge heading towards them, so not our original plan, but we thought we would check it out.

Downstream Little Cottonwood Creek.

Upstream.

Not an interpretive trail, it is a Tale Trail. You can read s short story as you walk along here. Well that is kind of fun!

There are 16 additional pages to the current featured book: Snowmen at Night.

Page 1. This is a really cute idea from the Murray City Library, which is just to the south of here. I used to use that library a lot actually.

I did take a picture of the rest of the pages, but I won’t share them all here.

Otherwise it is a nice stroll through the woods.

Huh. Murray also is just going the route of asking people to not feed he ducks and geese, rather than educating on what are better food options Like the Mehraban Wetland Park. I suppose either way, stop dumping bread into our water is the main point.

Little wetland area.

More forest.

Approaching the pond from the other side.

The pond.

Again.

The most pond like section today.

Murray Park Amphitheater. This is way, way more fancy than most park amphitheaters we have seen. It looks like they might actually do events here.

Well, it looks like this is actually a regularly used amphitheater. The Murray Arts Council performed their first musical on a temporary stage in the park in 1980. The amphitheater was built in 1985, remodeled 2016-17. New stadium seats (with cupholders!) were installed in 2023.

It would seem they run an Evening series from May - September Here.

Additionally, It looks like the Murray Arts Council also runs a Lunch Concert Series June - July (not here, but at Pavilion #5, free concert, no food provided, but encouraged to be brought). A Children Matinee Series June - July (also at Pavilion #5) and a Family Night Series February - November at the Senior Recreation Center.

More info at the Murray City Page (outside link) Well dang, I guess I might have to come check it out sometime.

The pond again.

with the mountains.

Another thick forested area, with lots and lots of squirrels.

Squirrel.

Another.

Forest.

You can follow the pavement out to the big parking lot, but we decided to go off trail behind the Park Office buildings, towards where we crossed the creek before. None of us had done this path before, so we were all just kind of winging it.

Well this is neat. It looks like there is a spring, that they tried to put a cement barrier around, and a tree grew over it. Almost, but not quite as cool as The Stump in Ogden.

Again.

I am still trying to confirm this, but I believe this might be the remnants of 1 of 3 artesian wells that used to be in the park. One source I found that helps me come to that conclusion. (outside link). So if I am correct, like The Stump it is an artesian well. In it’s current state, I would filter it though. 

More forest.

The back of the park offices and their sign yard. We have seen some of these signs in action.

Little gazebo.

Inside.

The lower bridge we crossed earlier.

The neat arch again. Lets see, 1848 - 1902. This refers to the year settled, and the year incorporated. I had to google that haha.

I am picking up Artesian Springs (now an apartment complex), and the old smoke stacks (now a hospital). I am sure there are a lot more iconic buildings that I don’t recognize right now.

I kept hearing some thumping noise, and I wondered if there was like, a Murray Park Version of the Liberty Park Drum Circle? Then we came across this … sound play ground? Next to another playground. It was recently vacated so I was able to get a shot without anybody in it. It looks like it has a couple fun noisy instruments to play with. I have said it before, I will say it again. Kids have so much more fun stuff to play with than we did as kids!

Fun peacock art.

Murray City puts their logo on everything. Haha, it's kind of cute actually.

Another bridge over Little Cottonwood Creek.

Upstream, Little Cottonwood Creek.

Downstream.

Ducks. This is in part of the arboretum. Give it a couple of weeks and it'll be super pretty through here. There are quite a few flowering trees.

A super cute Cheshire Cat themed little library.

Cute little pond.

Again.

These 2 male mallards kept chasing the female mallard who clearly was not having it!

I typically let my non hiker friends decide the course we do but uh… something caught my eye, and I led my friends to this instead.

Well, I’ll be. We stumbled upon another sequoia tree! This one is not listed on any of the lists of redwood trees I have been using to find them around the valley, so it was a way neat stumble upon! After our random quest to find a bunch of them, I am getting pretty good at identifying them on sight.

With the unique and rough needles.

This is the kind of thing I am talking about how we all just nerd out on different things haha.

Random part that says trail closed for repair. I was like, what trail? Kerrie mentioned there likely was a little connector to whatever is back there.

I thought these might have been more redwoods, but it turns out they are some sort of cedar.

Looking up.

Looking back at the sequoia.

Neat artistic benches.

Sycamore tree, I think.

Neat old trees and a another fancy gazebo.

Squirrel!

Another bridge over Little Cottonwood Creek.

Downstream.

Upstream.

Downstream again.

Murray Park Little Cottonwood Creek Trail.

In 1901 James Freeze built a home and other buildings in this area. In 1924 Murray City purchased a portion of the land from Sherman Freeze (James' son) as the beginning of Murray Park. The park began as a green space to protect the city from flooding.

The city has a goal to connect neighborhoods and parks with pedestrian and multi purpose pathways. They have connected State Street to this point, and have plans to one day connect it all the way to The Jordan River near the Little Cottonwood Confluence.

We totally misunderstood this sign last time we were here and thought the trail already goes that far west. It sure does not. But the goal is to one day! I absolutely look forward to that as I really enjoy exploring our creeks (if you can’t tell from a few recent posts).

That said, currently, this is the furthest downstream you can enjoy Little Cottonwood Creek before it joins the Jordan River at the Little Cottonwood Confluence. At least until they build up that trail some more.

Some kind of willow I am guessing?

It is quite pretty.

The Little Cottonwood Creek Trail.

Mount Olympus above.

A gnarly looking maple tree. I think, boxelder maple?

We learned a lot about maples in the Seattle Japanese Garden.

Blue spruce.

I want to explore the arboretum a little bit more sometime. But the south edge of it was pretty neat!

Uh oh. Something appears to be burning (PSP). I never did find out what it was. I guess it wasn’t big enough to make the news.

This was so not the path any of of intended on doing, but it was a surprisingly nice adventure with our friends. It was a nice day, so of course there were a lot of people out enjoying this great park. I loved finding a random redwood, I liked the really cute idea of reading a story as you walk, and I especially enjoyed walking along Little Cottonwood Creek for a little bit, Meh, 8 out of 10 squirrels.

As for difficulty, you can follow most of the route we did on paved paths, which would be a DR2. We did veer off the path a couple of times, which would bump it up to a DR3.

Dog are allowed, leashed. Please clean up after your furry friends.