FRUIT HEIGHTS—For the last seven years Fruit Heights and Farmington Cities have been working with the U.S. Forest Service to get control of undesignated federal land in order to maintain existing trails and develop new multi-use trails. 

After plan after plan was rejected, city leaders went to their U.S. House Representatives, Blake Moore and Celeste Maloy, with the hope of cutting through the red tape. At the end of September, the lawmakers introduced the “Fruit Heights Land Conveyance Act of 2025” conveying 295.89 acres of the federal land to the City of Fruit Heights allowing for the expansion of the trail system and other recreational activities.

“We put together some concepts and presented it to the Forest Service on how the project would be funded, maintained, built, etc,” said Fruit Heights Mayor John Pohlman. “They said they weren’t interested at this time because they had other projects. We tried for seven years and finally they said ‘no it’s not in our 10 year plan.’ That’s when we started working with our representatives in Congress.”

Pohlman said it’s not easy to get from Kaysville Wilderness Park to Farmington Canyon. “We’d like to have biking and hiking trails for outdoor enthusiasts but you can’t get to any trail without the Forest Service’s permission.”

“It’s been a joint effort with Fruit Heights,” said Farmington Mayor Brett Anderson. “We’ve been working on it for several years. I’d love to see this happen. Both communities would be enhanced.”

The land between the cities is under utilized, he said. “This would increase the recreational footprint for the cities to preserve the land for the public to use. It could be better used, enjoyed and connected to trails if it’s under our stewardship.”

There’s been bureaucratic red tape, said Anderson. “Big government takes a long time.”

Anderson said they’re also hyper aware of the need to manage the fuel up on the mountain. “It could feed a wildfire. We could manage that better and take steps to prevent the risk of a wildfire. That’s another reason we’re pushing for this.”

“Hiking and biking trails have always been a major component of recreation and community events along the Wasatch Front,” said Moore. “Unfortunately, federal red tape has made it impossible for necessary trail maintenance to move forward and for the construction of new trails connecting the existing trail network. The Fruit Heights Land Conveyance Act will allow the city to make these improvements and increase recreational access for Utahns.”

“Our desire is just to be able to build trails and maintain them,” said Pohlman. “There’s a lot of interest from individuals like the high school biking teams. We’d like to build trails locally so that people have more access to the outdoors in this area and in the region.”