A neighbor who lives off Silver Springs Drive told us she walked over to the preserve on a Sunday afternoon expecting to wander the wetlands the way she'd done a few times before, only to find the boardwalk gate closed and a sign pointing her toward the visitor's desk for a guided tour instead. She hadn't done anything wrong. She'd just picked the wrong side of the preserve for a walk-in visit.
That mix-up is common enough that it's worth explaining plainly, because most people who live near Swaner Preserve & EcoCenter think of it as one continuous stretch of open space between Silver Springs and Kimball Junction. It isn't. It's two distinct preserves stitched together by a single name, and this fall, the split determines exactly what you can do there without calling ahead.
The Preserve Is Two Places Wearing One Name
North of I-80 sits roughly 350 acres of sagebrush uplands, a hillside terrain that Swaner itself describes as the most biodiverse ecosystem on the property. Ten miles of trail wind through it, overlooking East Canyon Creek and connecting into the broader Park City trail network. You park at the Spring Creek Trailhead, you leash your dog, and you go. No sign-up, no naturalist required.
South of I-80 is a different arrangement entirely. That side holds about 850 acres of protected wetland, land sensitive enough that Swaner keeps it closed to unguided public access. The only way onto that section is a naturalist-led nature walk or a private tour.
| North Section (Uplands) | South Section (Wetlands) | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | ~350 acres | ~850 acres |
| Access | Open, unguided | Guided tours only |
| How you get in | Spring Creek Trailhead, any time | Pre-registered Saturday nature walk or private tour |
| What's there | 10 miles of hiking and biking trail, sagebrush hillside, creek views | Wetland Discovery Trail, boardwalk, birding, sandhill cranes in season |
Neither side is lesser. But if your plan is to lace up boots and just go, you want the north side. If you're picturing a slow walk out onto the boardwalk toward the wetlands, you need a reservation, and that reservation has a clock on it.
What Just Opened Lives on the No-Appointment Side
The reason this distinction matters right now is that everything new at Swaner this month sits inside the EcoCenter itself, which is open to anyone during regular hours with no advance booking.
On September 12, Swaner opened Ephemeral, a juried art exhibition built around Utah's native plants and produced in partnership with the Utah Native Plant Society. The show runs through November 29 and pulls from local artists working across mediums, all of it built around the wildflowers, shrubs, and grasses that actually grow on the ground outside the building's windows.
Alongside it, Swaner quietly launched something more useful than decorative: a free native seed library. Visitors can walk in and take up to three seed packets to plant in their own yards, and the program also accepts donated seed from residents' own gardens, screened by Swaner staff for variety and dryness before it goes back into circulation. For a neighborhood built on flat, tree-lined lots where people actually garden, that's not a museum piece. That's a resource.
The EcoCenter's visitor experience coordinator, Bri Cencak, has described the broader push behind programs like these as a way to get people looking closely at what's already around them, in her words, "whether that's on a hike, at the park or even in your own backyard." The seed library takes that idea and hands you the literal means to do it.
None of this requires you to plan around a Saturday morning cutoff. Walk in Wednesday through Sunday, browse the exhibit, take your seed packets, walk out.
The Actual Walk From Your Own Street
Part of what makes this genuinely convenient rather than theoretically convenient is how directly Silver Springs connects to the preserve on foot. The Ranch Place subdivision sits adjacent to Swaner's boundary, and the neighborhood's own trail network, including the McLeod Creek Trail, links straight into the preserve's perimeter paths and the paved and gravel routes that run along its edge, some of which continue all the way into Old Town for anyone with the legs for it.
That means the walk to the EcoCenter for most Silver Springs residents isn't a drive to a trailhead. It's a walk out the back gate, along a trail you probably already use to get to Willow Creek Park, that happens to end at a building with a new art show and a bin of native seeds in it.
If You Actually Want the Wetlands Side
The guided walks are worth doing, and they're not hard to get into, but they run on a stricter schedule than most people assume. The Saturday nature walk is capped at 15 participants, registration is required in advance, and same-day sign-ups close at 7 a.m. the morning of the walk. Show up without registering and the answer is no, regardless of how empty the parking lot looks.
Once you're on the list, plan for 45 minutes to an hour on flat ground with a slight grade, though the walk allows for turning back early if you don't want the full loop. Depending on the season, guides note that participants might spot elk, a range of birds, or nesting sandhill cranes along the wetland corridor. In winter, the walk shifts to snowshoes, which Swaner rents on site for $2.50 for members and $5 for non-members.
If you're the kind of neighbor who plans a Saturday morning around a specific errand, put the registration reminder on your calendar the night before, not the morning of.
Before You Walk Over
A few practical details worth knowing before you make the trip this fall:
- The EcoCenter is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- It will be closed on October 7 and October 8, both of which fall on a Wednesday and Thursday this year, easy to miss if you're used to the regular schedule.
- Admission is free, with a suggested donation.
- The Ephemeral exhibit and native seed library are both available during regular open hours, no reservation needed.
- The Saturday nature walk requires registration in advance, with same-day sign-up closing at 7 a.m.
None of this changes what the preserve means to the neighborhood day to day. It's still the open space that gives Silver Springs its flat trails, its sense of room, and its particular kind of quiet that's hard to find elsewhere at this elevation. But knowing which side of that quiet you can walk into on a whim, and which side asks you to plan ahead, is the difference between a wasted Sunday and a good one.
If Swaner Preserve is part of why you'd want to call this neighborhood home, or if you're weighing Silver Springs against other Snyderville Basin communities for exactly this kind of everyday access, the team at Jensen and Company knows this stretch of Park City block by block. Find Your Luxury Home Today.
