The Red Rock Legacy Trail Opened This Spring. The Next Five Miles Still Don't Have a Start Date.

If you ride or walk out toward Red Rock most mornings from The Ridges, you probably noticed the new traffic signal at Charleston and Sky Vista before you noticed anything else. It's the kind of change that registers in your body before your brain catches up: the light changes, the cars actually stop, and for the first time you're not timing your crossing against a gap in traffic doing 55 down SR-159. That intersection, and the mile of pavement running west from it, is the whole visible result of a project that's been talked about in Summerlin for close to two decades. It's real now. It's also a lot smaller than the ribbon-cutting coverage back in April made it sound.

The Ridges sits on 800 acres west of the 215 Beltway, its westernmost lots backing straight up to the same federally protected land that draws three million visitors a year to Red Rock Canyon. That proximity has always been the sales pitch for the neighborhood and the daily reality for the people who live there. What changed this year isn't the proximity. It's that a small, specific piece of the route between here and the canyon finally got a dedicated lane instead of a highway shoulder, and the piece that's still missing is a lot bigger than most residents realize.

What Actually Opened on April 28

Clark County cut the ribbon on Phase 1 of the Red Rock Legacy Trail on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, with about twenty cyclists, including members of the Colavita Cycling Team, riding the new segment for the first time. The finished piece is a 0.99-mile, 12-foot-wide paved path running from the northwest corner of Charleston Boulevard and Sky Vista Drive out to the Red Rock Canyon marker. The county also installed the new signal at that intersection, built a parking lot on the southeast corner for trail users, and moved the canyon's roadside marker itself to a safer pull-off so visitors can stop for photos without drifting onto the shoulder.

Commissioner Justin Jones, whose district includes this stretch, framed the point of the project plainly at the opening:

"This will give them a safe opportunity, whether you're riding a bike, hiking, or pushing a stroller."

That's the whole win, and it's worth sitting with because it's a real one. Longtime Sun City Summerlin cyclists Barry and Susan Feinberg, who ride this corridor three times a week, told the Review-Journal after their first pass on the new pavement that it felt smooth and safe in a way the old shoulder never did. For anyone in The Ridges who has ever pedaled or jogged along Charleston toward the canyon and felt a truck pass a little closer than they'd like, that's not a small thing.

Where the Pavement Actually Stops

Here's the part that got lost in most of the coverage. The original plan for this section was a single 5.5-mile connector running all the way from Sky Vista Drive to the Red Rock Canyon Visitor Center. Clark County's own project page is direct about why that didn't happen: funding shortfalls forced the county to build only the first 0.99 miles and stop at the start of what's now called Phase 2, rather than delivering the full connector as one piece. The Regional Transportation Commission approved funding for that second section of the original connector back in December 2024, but as of the county's most recent public update, no start date has been set for building it.

So the honest picture, if you're standing at that new trailhead parking lot on Sky Vista, is this: the paved path under your feet ends at the relocated canyon marker, not at the visitor center, and not anywhere close to the Scenic Loop. The next leg, Phase 2, is a 6.61-mile segment that runs from where Phase 1 ends, crosses under SR-159 through an underpass, and eventually reaches the exit of the Red Rock Scenic Loop. The trail's own project team anticipates Phase 2 opening in 2028, two years out, with Phase 3 following on a similar timeline. Phases 4 and 5, which would eventually carry the trail all the way to Blue Diamond, are still in early design.

None of that makes the April opening meaningless. It just means the mile you've got now is a genuinely useful mile, not a preview of a finished route.

What Changed at One Corner, Specifically

If your regular loop out of The Ridges touches this exact corner, that table is the entire practical update. If your route continues past the marker toward the Scenic Loop or the Visitor Center, you're still sharing the shoulder with cars on SR-159 for the next several miles, exactly as you were last year. The full $100 million buildout, funded through a mix of the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act and the Federal Lands Access Program, is a multi-year project, and this spring's opening is the first of five phases, not the second-to-last.

Timed Entry Hasn't Changed, Either

Worth remembering while you're planning around this: the trail improvements at Sky Vista don't touch Red Rock Canyon's separate timed-entry system for the Scenic Loop drive itself. Reservations are still required for the loop between October 1 and May 31, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., bookable through Recreation.gov. Since we're heading into that window again this fall, it's a good moment to book ahead if the loop drive, rather than the new trail segment, is part of your weekend plan.

The Corridor Stayed Busy This Summer

Save Red Rock, the nonprofit advocacy group that's pushed this project for more than twenty years, has kept the corridor active well beyond the ribbon-cutting. The group closed out its 2026 season this month with the Diamond Kid Junior Triathlon on September 12, a youth run-bike-swim event that raises money for the same conservation and trail-safety work behind the Legacy Trail itself. It's a small event in the scheme of things, but it's a useful marker of how much local energy is still going into this stretch of road even after the cameras left in April. If you want to follow what's actually happening with Phases 2 through 5 as design work continues, Save Red Rock's project updates are a more current source than anything written at the time of the groundbreaking.

The Actual Takeaway for Anyone Riding Out of The Ridges

The honest version of this story is that Summerlin got its first mile of a genuinely safer route toward Red Rock this spring, and it's a real improvement if your loop passes through Charleston and Sky Vista. The next several miles, the ones that would actually get you off the shoulder all the way to the Visitor Center or the Scenic Loop, are still years away, and nobody's published a start date for the connector piece that was supposed to make Phase 1 whole. If you're planning your routes around this corridor, plan around the mile that exists, not the trail that's still on a drawing board in Carson City and Clark County offices.

If you're weighing a move within The Ridges, curious what a specific lot's proximity to this corridor is actually worth, or just want a conversation with someone who tracks these projects as closely as the neighborhoods they run through, Stephanie Taffanelli at Vegas Listing Experts is a good person to call. Schedule a time to talk through it.