After a devastating windstorm forced trail rebuilds, one Iowa county discovered an insatiable local appetite for gravity trails—and now they're building a bike park inspired by Bentonville.
“We really want to make eastern Iowa and Linn County kind of the epicenter for mountain biking in Iowa,” said Ted Doscher, Project Planner for Linn County Conservation. It’s a bold goal for the county, which anchored by the city of Cedar Rapids (population 137,000), but the latest trail development underway just 30 minutes north in Central City suggests Doscher might just pull it off.
As Doscher spoke about his plans for Linn County, he referenced many well-known trail systems, saying, “We wanted something similar to Coler,” which is in Bentonville. He also referenced the Castle Hub in Bentonville, and even the Galloping Goose trail at the famous Cuyuna Lakes Trail System in northern Minnesota. Doscher has clearly done his homework, traveling the region to draw inspiration from the best MTB trails in the heartland.
Thanks to that world-class inspiration, the newest gravity trails built in Linn County are already turning out to be winners.
Wanatee Park, located on the outskirts of Cedar Rapids, has long been home to a few mellow cross country mountain bike trails. But after the devastating August 2020 derecho—a historic windstorm that hammered Cedar Rapids with 140mph straight-line winds for nearly an hour—the county had to rebuild many of the trails at Wanatee. They took the opportunity to build a small jump line with 7-8 jumps and a skills park with a three-tiered drop feature and beginner and advanced lines.
After building that small bike park, “the popularity exploded,” said Doscher. “Every day that site was busy, and we were like, ‘Oh, the community is hungry. We need something better.'”
Shortly thereafter, Linn County began work on a five-mile cross-country loop at Pinicon Ridge Park, just outside of Central City. The builder who was working on the XC trail came to Doscher and said, “You won’t believe this — I found three beautiful valleys and little knolls out in the back of the park. I think we could do something special,” according to Doscher.