"It feels unreal to have reached this point after ten years of effort." That's how Save the Buena Vista Foundation described the afternoon this spring when the U.S. Forest Service finally signed off on a trail network that Show Low riders and hikers had already been using for two generations without any official standing at all.
The trails sit south of U.S. 60, folded into old logging roads and hand-cut singletrack a short drive from downtown. Locals have called the network the Secret Trails since the mid-1980s, back when a handful of riders started building line by hand through the oak and manzanita without asking anyone's permission, mostly because there wasn't really anyone official to ask. The land belongs to the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, and for close to forty years, almost none of that singletrack existed on paper. It existed on the ground, maintained by whoever showed up with a shovel on a Saturday.
That changed on May 23, when the Forest Service approved a plan a decade in the making. Trail crews from TRACKS were out at the Buena Vista trailhead by 8 a.m. two days later, on Memorial Day, starting construction on the first trail in the system to ever get an actual name.
Why Some of This Trail Already Had Papers and the Rest Didn't
The approval covers something specific: social trails within the project area that had been left out of an earlier land exchange. Part of the Buena Vista system had already passed through the city's hands years ago through that separate process. The rest, including most of what riders think of when they picture the Secret Trails, sat outside that exchange and outside any formal designation. This spring's decision is what finally brought that remaining, unaddressed piece into the official system.
The push to get there started in 2016, when the foundation's own account admits the idea of the Forest Service blessing a bootleg trail network sounded like something not many people took seriously. Save the Buena Vista Foundation organized formally in March 2020 to carry the effort forward, and six months later the group filed a joint master plan with the City of Show Low and TRACKS, the nonprofit that maintains trail across the broader White Mountain Trail System. That plan asked for more than a rubber stamp on what already existed. It proposed an eventual 30-plus mile connected system, including an expansion across U.S. 60 into the Chihuahua Pines corridor.
Getting from that 2020 proposal to an actual Forest Service signature took another five years of petitions, public comment periods, and coordination between the foundation, TRACKS, the city, and the agency that manages the land. Part of what slowed things down was the need to identify segments running too close to archaeologically sensitive ground, since any official designation had to account for rerouting those sections rather than simply grandfathering in every existing line.
What Official Status Actually Changes on the Ground
None of the dirt moved when the paperwork cleared. What changed is who's allowed to touch it and under what terms.
Before May, any new trail work at Buena Vista sat in a gray zone, since none of it was permitted construction on federal land. After the approval, TRACKS can build, maintain, and sign trail there without that uncertainty attached to every shovel-full of dirt. The first proof showed up fast. A beginner-friendly green trail called Rainbows went in that holiday weekend, followed almost immediately by a companion trail named Sunshine, both aimed at newer riders and hikers who found the older, rougher lines through the Secret Trails a little intimidating.
The approval also does something less visible but arguably more important: it protects the system from the kind of abrupt closure that unofficial trails can face. Trails without designation can be shut down with far less process than official ones, particularly during fire restrictions or when a land manager decides an unsanctioned route conflicts with other forest uses. Volunteers pushed to get Rainbows and Sunshine built before summer fire restrictions could shut down work entirely, which is part of why two new trails appeared within days of approval instead of months later.
What's Actually Out There If You Ride It This Fall
The Buena Vista Trail, numbered 637 on Forest Service maps, is still the closest trail system to downtown Show Low, reachable in a few minutes by driving west on U.S. 60 toward the White Mountain Apache Reservation boundary. The formally marked route follows those original logging roads, but most riders come for the roughly 15 miles of pure singletrack woven around and beyond it, much of it built years before the trail even got its Forest Service number in the 1990s.
Riders headed out this season will find a few things worth knowing before they go:
- Clear-day views of Mount Baldy to the southeast and the San Francisco Peaks to the northwest from several points along the route
- A multi-use trail open to hikers, mountain bikers, trail runners, and horseback riders, with snowshoe and Nordic ski use once winter sets in
- Dogs permitted on the marked route
- A difficulty range running from easy, family-friendly loops on the new Rainbows and Sunshine trails up through genuinely technical climbs on the older, unofficial lines that built the system's reputation in the first place
That range is new. For most of the trail's history, Buena Vista carried a reputation as a system for people who already knew where the good singletrack was, since the marked route itself was rough, eroding two-track that experienced riders tended to skip in favor of the unofficial lines threading around it. Rainbows and Sunshine are the first sign that the network is finally being built for people who don't already know where to look.
The Bigger Build Is Still Ahead
The May approval covers the Buena Vista side of the plan. It doesn't yet extend across U.S. 60 into Chihuahua Pines, the second half of the 2020 proposal that would eventually connect trail into several neighborhoods bordering the corridor. That expansion needs its own approval process, and nothing in the current Forest Service decision sets a timeline for when or whether it happens.
What the Buena Vista approval proves is that the process works, even when it takes a decade. Ten years of petitions and coordination between a volunteer foundation, a trail-maintenance nonprofit, city government, and a federal land agency turned an informal network into a recognized part of the forest, and the first physical result of that work is already on the ground for anyone willing to drive out and ride it this fall.
If the new trailhead has you paying more attention to this side of Show Low than you used to, Erin Amos can tell you what else is changing on the ground here, well beyond the singletrack.
