The serenity of the Bonneville Shoreline Trailhead is less than a mile from the whizzing traffic of the highway below.
But the 14-acre green slope near the mouth of Parleys Canyon is now a world apart from the urban landscape at its feet, creating a barrier to any plans to continue the construction of homes creeping up the hillside.
Salt Lake County and Utah Open Lands signed a conservation easement Thursday to ensure it stays that way.
"This may be one of our final frontiers to have space like this," County Mayor Peter Corroon said. "Fourteen acres doesn't seem like a lot of land, but in these urban areas we don't have a lot of open space left and it's important to preserve it from being overdeveloped."
Salt Lake County shelled out $290,000 to buy and protect the land after nearly a year of negotiations with the trust, which originally purchased the land from Utah Power in 2001.
The trust, which buys land for conservation and then sells it to public entities, originally planned to sell the land to the U.S. Forest Service but couldn't recoup its investment after learning the land was not contiguous with the Wasatch-Cache National Forest.
Although Salt Lake County stepped in to purchase the land, the trust still had to scrape together about $173,000 in donations to make up the difference between the county's check and the property's $500,000 price tag.
That price is a steal for Emery Crook, director of parks and planning for the county, who has been eyeing the property for nearly 15 years. The relatively small area, he said, is the key to opening the door for the completion of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail the county hopes will one day run continuously to Sandy.
The newly acquired property had at least five developable sites that could have one day been cleared and turned into home plats, Crook said. That development would have ruined the county's trail plans and could have blocked public access to the area.
"It's absolutely critical for the Bonneville Shoreline Trail," Crook said. "It stops any kind of additional development. It just preserves it forever."
The proposed route for that trail cuts straight through the county's new acreage, which will also now grant legal access to Grandeur Peak, Parleys Canyon and several forest preserves.
"Until this acquisition, you didn't have the right to go into these foothills," said Rick Reese, chair of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail Committee. "Salt Lake citizens can take for granted that they can walk in here for miles. Few of them will be aware of the effort and the money and the agony that went into this."
But Reese added that the work is far from over, with roughly 89 private properties that still need to be purchased to make way for the completion of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. While some areas like Salt Lake City have finished large sections of the trail, the path doesn't yet run through any of the county's unincorporated regions.
Corroon noted that county leaders are working with the Bonneville Shoreline Trail Committee, the U.S. Forest Service and several cities to purchase those gap properties and to provide public access.
E-mail: estewart@desnews.com