BOUNTIFUL—Oscar King Green was always happiest sitting on his horse riding along the trails he’d built and cleared himself above Bountiful. He was still riding when he turned 99 and then got on the horse each birthday after. The larger than life cowboy hung up the saddle on Aug. 1, just four days before his 102nd birthday.

“After the 1983 flood, King single handedly made it his mission to rebuild the trail up Ward Canyon,” said his granddaughter Lorilyn Glenn. “That is where it all started, his years of work clearing and building trails in Ward, Holbrook, and Mueller Park Canyons. The city is naming the trail up Holbrook Canyon Kings Trail and a bridge Kings Bridge in his honor.”

He wanted others to enjoy the beautiful outdoors and trails so they could go farther distances up Bountiful’s canyons, she said. “He made scabbards to hold his pickaxe, shovel, clippers, and chainsaw on his horse. He often rode home at dusk singing ‘Riding Down the Canyon to Watch the Sun Go Down’ by Gene Autry.” 

In 1991, he started the trail up Holbrook Canyon. In a previous interview in 2021 when King turned 100, he said, “You couldn’t ride a horse up there then. I would go as far as I could get then I’d build that trail until I got to the top of the mountain. I got some help on it too. I loved that, I’d spend all the time I could building the trail up there.”

King retired after 35 years as an Air Force civil service employee at the Hill Air Force Base Aircraft Maintenance Depot, mostly working on the B-29 Super Fortress, said Glenn. “He never stopped working even after retirement. He worked as a master carpenter for years.”

King has owned 19 horses, she said. “He’s never been without a horse over the last 74 years. Winston Churchill once said, ‘No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.’ King has logged many hours in the saddle, but he considers the hours all over the mountains near Bountiful precious and therapeutic.”

Glenn said King first rode in Bountiful when he rented a horse at Bungee Ranch, where the Bountiful Ridge Golf Course is now. “King rode from Bountiful up to the Great Western trail along the ridge of the mountains all the way to Salt Lake. He got lost when he went off the trail. He stayed the night, found a spring and encountered a sheepherder that helped direct him.”

King was always pushing the limits, she said. “No one could tell him he was too old to ride horses. He’d joke and say if it was his time to go he’d like to pass away doing something he loved – riding a horse.”