For September 21 through 25, the city scheduled work on the stretch of Dry Canyon Trail between 15th Street and Rimrock Way: a flagger was to wave cyclists into single file while a crew was to place gravel along the trail's shoulder. That schedule ran Monday through Friday, from seven in the morning to five at night, and the city said it was meant to firm up the trail's edge before winter traffic starts wearing it down again. It is not a big project. It barely qualifies as news. But it was scheduled on a trail that spent more than a year split into two disconnected pieces, and the fact that the patch job barely registered is the actual story.
For most of 2025 and into the first half of 2026, Dry Canyon Trail was not one trail through Redmond. It was two trails with a gap in the middle, and most people who walk their dog or ride the pump track never had a reason to notice, because the detour was easy enough to shrug off. Now that the gap is closed, the corridor works differently than it did a year ago, and that shift is worth understanding if you use this canyon at all.
The Split Nobody Had to Think About
Construction on what the city calls the Central Dry Canyon Improvement Project began in May 2025, tearing through the section of Dry Canyon Park where the trail runs past Sam Johnson Park toward the Weigand Family Dog Park. For over a year, the fenced-off construction zone between 15th Street and Rimrock Way meant anyone trying to move through that section on foot or by bike had to detour out to Antler Avenue to pick up Rimrock Way on the other side.
That's a minor annoyance if you're out for a loop and don't mind an extra block on pavement. It's a bigger deal if you're walking a dog from a house near the dog park and expecting a continuous canyon path to Sam Johnson's fields and courts. The detour worked, but it broke the thing that makes Dry Canyon Trail useful in the first place: that it's supposed to be one uninterrupted corridor running north to south through town, connecting neighborhoods without ever putting you on a street.
What the New Crosswalk Actually Fixes
The project's final phase was slated to wrap by the end of June 2026, and the piece that matters most for daily use is a new lighted crosswalk and protected walking path linking the dog park to Sam Johnson Park directly through the canyon. In a Redmond Spokesman report, Assistant city engineer Lindsey Cromsigt said, "We appreciate the public's patience as we work through the project."
The scope goes beyond the crosswalk. The city's own project records describe a $5.8 million reconfiguration that included new pavement, trails, and parking, an 8-inch and 12-inch water line, and a full reconfiguration of Spudbowl Park. That's a lot of engineering for what looks, from the trail, like one crosswalk and a smoother path. But the crosswalk is the part that changes how the canyon functions day to day, because it's what turns two separate halves back into a single walkable, bikeable line.
Here's what that line now connects without a street crossing or a detour:
- Weigand Family Dog Park, with separate fenced areas for large and small dogs
- Sam Johnson Park's tennis and pickleball courts and open fields
- The Homestead Bike Pump Track, an asphalt loop with rolling jumps and banked turns built for riders at any skill level
- The Maple Bridge Climbing Arches, a climbing structure tucked beneath a 70-foot-tall, 780-foot-long concrete bridge that most drivers overhead never look down to notice
- The reconfigured Spudbowl Park
None of that is new construction in the sense of new amenities. All of it existed before 2025. What changed is that you can now move between these spots on one continuous trail instead of routing around a fenced-off gap, which matters more than it sounds like it should if you've ever tried to explain to a dog why the direct route is suddenly blocked.
The September Work Was Different, and Smaller
The closures scheduled for September 21 through 25 weren't part of that bigger reconnection project. They were routine trail maintenance, with rock to be placed along the shoulder to improve stability and the trail's edge condition, according to the city's own statement. The plan called for sections to open and close intermittently through the week, with detour routes posted and flaggers on site during work hours. Cyclists in particular were asked to slow down through the active zones.
It's a small, unglamorous kind of work, and that's exactly what makes it a good sign rather than a bad one. The trail had gone through a $5.8 million reconstruction scheduled to wrap by early summer, and maintenance work was scheduled a few months later. That suggests the city was still actively managing it, not fixing it once and forgetting it. During the September 21 through 25 work period, the posted detour signs were the guide, since closures were expected to move day to day rather than sit in one fixed spot.
There's also a second, unrelated project still working in the same general area. A new pump house north of Antler Avenue, near the dog park, is part of the city's Well 9 water system upgrade and is expected to finish by the end of 2026. It doesn't affect the trail directly, but it's one more reason the canyon corridor still has some construction fencing scattered through it even though the main trail project is done.
Where the Canyon Meets Downtown
Dry Canyon Trail runs north-south through Redmond, and downtown sits right at its edge, which is part of why the local arts nonprofit organizing the monthly art walk took its name from the canyon itself. The Dry Canyon Arts Association runs Redmond's First Friday Art Walk, a free evening event on SW 6th Street where local artists set up in storefronts, hotel lobbies, and galleries, marked by large orange feather flags outside each participating venue. The walk runs through October 2 this year, from 5 to 8 in the evening.
Past participating stops have included Arome Kitchen, Willow Wild, Desert Prairie Boutique, and the SCP Hotel, all clustered on 6th Street between Cascade and Forest. A few blocks over, Blacksmith Public House and Wild Ride Brewing Co. host their own recurring nights, live music at the former and a weekly business networking meetup at the latter, giving downtown a rhythm that runs independent of the art walk but overlaps with it most Fridays.
The connection between the trail and downtown isn't just geographic. It's that the same canyon giving Redmond its dog park, its pump track, and its climbing structure also gave its arts scene a name. That's not a coincidence worth dwelling on for its own sake, but it does mean the canyon functions as more than a recreation amenity tucked behind residential streets. It's the spine the rest of the town's daily activity runs along.
A Trail That Works as One Piece Again
Dry Canyon Trail measures 7.7 miles out and back, cutting straight through Redmond from NW 19th Street down to Quartz Avenue, according to the city's parks listing and corroborated by AllTrails' route data. For over a year, the middle third of that route asked you to leave the canyon and finish your trip on a street. By the time September's rock crew showed up to work on the shoulder, the city was treating that stretch as ordinary trail, not a construction zone, which is the clearest sign the gap has actually closed.
If you've been avoiding the Sam Johnson-to-dog-park stretch out of habit from the detour years, it's worth walking it again before the fall weather turns. Centennial Spray Park closed for the season after Labor Day, so if you're taking kids through the canyon right now, the pump track and climbing arches are the draw rather than the splash pad. The rock work was scheduled to move through different sections daily through Friday, so visitors during the September 21 through 25 work period needed to check the city's posted detour signage.
Ninebark Real Estate spends a lot of time walking Central Oregon's neighborhoods, not just listing homes in them. If you're curious what a specific stretch of Redmond looks like on foot, or how a property sits relative to the canyon, the dog park, or downtown, reach out to Ninebark Real Estate and we'll walk you through it.
