On a clear September evening, you can stand on a street above Federal Heights Crest and watch two different kinds of light. Down the hill, string lights and stage floods glow from the Red Butte Garden amphitheatre, where a crowd is filing in for one of the last shows of the year. Up the hill, past the last driveway, the trail into Popperton is going dark the ordinary way, dirt turning gray, the city's version of a foothill quieting down for the night.
Most people who live here treat those two landmarks as a matching set: the garden and the trailhead, the concert calendar and the hiking loop, two amenities that come with the address. They don't run on the same clock. One of them has eight days left in its season. The other one has been "under construction" for so long that the city's own project page still lists a permit as pending, more than a year after four sister trailheads down the ridge got their ribbon cuttings.
Eight Days Left On One Clock
Red Butte Garden's 2026 Outdoor Concert Series opened May 31 with Big Head Todd and The Monsters and has run 31 shows since, the biggest lineup in the venue's history. Grace Potter, Ziggy Marley, Wynton Marsalis, Maren Morris, and a Human League show that sold out before most of the season's other tickets went on sale all played the amphitheatre this summer. Ray LaMontagne finally made it back in August, closing out a date that had been rescheduled from 2025 after a surgery forced him to cancel.
As of today, three dates remain:
| Date | What's happening |
|---|---|
| Sept. 17, 2026 | Gates 6:30 p.m., show 7:30 p.m. |
| Sept. 20, 2026 | Gates 6 p.m., show 7 p.m. |
| Sept. 22, 2026 | Season closer, The Revivalists |
After the 22nd, the amphitheatre goes quiet for the year. The garden itself does not close. Its fall calendar keeps moving without the crowds: a native plant and bulb sale later this month, a bonsai show October 3 and 4, an orchid show November 7 and 8. If you've been avoiding the garden all summer because of concert traffic on Wakara Way and Red Butte Canyon Road, the next six weeks are the quiet version of the same place.
The Trailhead That's Still Waiting On Its Permit
Popperton tells a different story. The city bundled it into a five-trailhead infrastructure project with Victory Road, Bonneville Blvd, 18th Ave, and Emigration Canyon, backed by $1.3 million in city funds matched by a grant from the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation. Four of those five got their finish line. When Bonneville Blvd celebrated its grand opening in May 2025, the city's announcement noted six artist-designed bike rack murals were already installed there, painted by local artists Xander Brickey, Eric Fairclough, Valerie Jar, Bill Louis, Caro Nilsson, and Brooklyn Ottens, with four more headed to Popperton "later this summer."
That was over a year ago. The most recent public project page for Popperton still lists the sewer-connected restroom permit as pending, with no newer city update confirming either the restroom or the murals ever arrived. Three of Popperton's five siblings got a public celebration. Popperton got a status line that hasn't changed in a while.
None of that means the trailhead is off-limits. The city's own page is explicit that no trail closures are expected there, and the 35 striped parking stalls in front of the playfield, two of them ADA compliant, have been usable throughout construction. What's missing is the polish: the finished restroom, the wayfinding signage, the murals that were supposed to make Popperton match its neighbors. For a resident who just wants to walk a loop before dinner, that gap barely registers. For anyone tracking whether the city delivers on its stated timelines here, it's worth knowing the difference between "open" and "finished."
What's Actually Usable Right Now
Popperton's own trail network is small, named, and easy to sort by what you're doing:
- South Pop: a beginner mountain bike loop, under a mile, good for a first-timer's first ride
- Hop On Pop, Big Pop, Lil Pop: a set of one-way, counter-clockwise biking loops roughly a mile each, gentle grades, built for learning berms and rollers rather than covering ground
- West Popperton Hiking Loop: an easy mile on the west side of Spring Gulch, hiking only, no bikes
- Connections onward: the trailhead links to both Dry Creek Trail and Tomahawk Trail, which feed into the Bonneville Shoreline Trail and the rest of the city's Foothills system
Dogs have to stay leashed the entire time, no exceptions, and the park's own materials mention coyotes among the wildlife that use the same open space. It's a small detail, but it separates Popperton from some of the off-leash options elsewhere in the foothills, and it's the kind of thing you want to know before your dog spots something interesting off in the scrub oak.
The paved connector at the bottom of Dry Gulch is the piece that turns a short walk into a longer plan. Riders who want a loop rather than an out-and-back use it to reach the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, then come back down through the City Creek and Avenues sections before returning along 11th Avenue. It's the same foothill system that runs past Red Butte Canyon and the Tomahawk Natural Area on Federal Heights' eastern edge, all of it reachable on foot from most addresses in the neighborhood.
The Six Weeks Between Two Endings
If you've been putting off a Red Butte Garden concert this year, you have three chances left before the amphitheatre's season closes on the 22nd. After that, the garden's foot traffic drops off, its parking lots empty out earlier in the evening, and Wakara Way stops backing up on weeknights. That's also the point where Popperton makes more sense as your regular loop rather than an occasional detour: cooler evenings, no concert crossflow at the bottom of the hill, and a trailhead that, permit or no permit, still gets you onto Dry Creek and Tomahawk without a closure in sight.
The mismatch between these two landmarks isn't a complaint about either one. Red Butte Garden runs one of the more ambitious outdoor concert calendars in the Mountain West, and a five-trailhead infrastructure project that delivers four out of five on schedule is still a real investment in this part of the city. The point is narrower: the two things Federal Heights residents lump together as "our foothill access" are running on opposite timelines this month, and knowing which one is closing and which one is still catching up changes how you'd actually plan the next six weeks here.
If you're weighing a move to this stretch of the east bench, or you already live here and are curious what a property near Popperton or the garden is actually worth this fall, James Roth tracks Federal Heights closely enough to know which trailhead has a permit pending and which amphitheatre gate closes first. Reach out to talk through the neighborhood, whether you're buying, selling, or just trying to figure out where to park next weekend.
