Park that honors piece of Salt Lake City history set to receive makeover

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Salt Lake City's Donner Trail Park is undergoing a redesign to enhance amenities.
• The project includes new playgrounds, pathways and a memorial tree grove.
• Completion is expected by year-end with public art inspired by park's history included.

SALT LAKE CITY — A park that reflects on the history of one of the Salt Lake Valley's final pre-pioneer moments is getting an upgrade, which will include a new grove to honor loved ones.

Construction crews descended on Donner Trail Park, 2903 E. Kennedy Drive, to carry out a redesign of the 14.3-acre park. A section of the park is now closed for construction, and rotating sections of the park will close over the next few months, said Jana Cunningham, spokeswoman for Salt Lake City Department of Parks and Public Lands.

"We're very excited about it. It's going to have a really big improvement compared to what it is today," she said.

Donner Trail Park was established decades ago to commemorate the pioneers of the Donner-Reed Party who trekked through Utah in the summer of 1846 — a year before the city's pioneer settlement. Months after reaching the valley, their Western journey fell apart in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, resulting in tales of starvation and cannibalism that claimed dozens of the party's members.

Today, the park has aging playgrounds with pathways that offer scenic views of the city from the East Bench neighborhood. Salt Lake City plans on adding new playgrounds, pathways, a memorial tree grove and many new water-wise vegetation.

The new playground setup will cater to a "wider variety of ages," Cunningham said. It will be located near new pathways that seek to build on the park's existing vistas.

A new irrigation system will be installed in the park to improve watering efficiency, for both the water-wise vegetation and the new grove. The latter is a new community-led feature in which people can donate trees in honor of loved ones that will be scattered throughout the park, Cunningham explained.

"It's going to create a bigger tree canopy and more shade in this space," she said. "It already has a good amount of shade, and this will create even more. It'll be really beautiful, and people can come walk through the grove."

The project will be capped with a public art installation fitting for the park.

A design board and members of the city's Public Art Program selected a design by Oregon-based sculptor Adam Kuby called "Journey Lines," which aims to use sculpted berms and stone elements that reflect the various journeys people took to Salt Lake City and integrate that with the surrounding landscape.

Salt Lake City set aside $750,000 for the project from an $85 million general obligation bond that residents approved for parks-related projects in 2022, which funds most of the upgrades. About 1.5% of the bond is dedicated to public arts, helping fund Kuby's piece. Another $434,000 was allocated for the tree grove through the city's capital improvement program.

The project is slated to be completed by the end of this year.

"I think anyone who uses this space will be so excited to see (the improvements)," Cunningham said, adding that she believes it will offer more variety of park experiences for the neighborhood. "There will be more seating and different pathways to go through. ... It'll be kind of a whole new space."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

Related topics

UtahHistoricSalt Lake CountyOutdoors

Carter Williams

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Carter Williams is a reporter for KSL. He covers Salt Lake City, statewide transportation issues, outdoors, the environment and weather. He is a graduate of Southern Utah University.