A South Side nonprofit is raising money to build eight mountain bike trails in Big Marsh Park so Chicagoans can learn how to tackle mountain biking without leaving the city.
The new trails, totaling over a mile in length, will include ramps, sharp turns, jumps and hills, said Paul Fitzgerald, executive director of Friends of Big Marsh. There will also be pedestrian-friendly parts to the trail.
“We don’t have an opportunity in Chicago for mountain biking, which is a really fast-growing part of the sport,” Fitzgerald said. “I think that it’s important that young people have a lot of opportunities to test their skills and their comfort level with a variety of sports.”
Construction could begin this spring and be completed in 2025, Fitzgerald said.
Big Marsh Park, 11555 S. Stony Island Ave. in South Deering, was the “first purpose-built bike park” when in Chicago, Fitzgerald said. A former waste site for steel production, the park opened in 2016. The nearly 300-acre park has single track biking trails, a pump track, a street-style plaza for skaters and bikers, and jump lines.
Friends of Big Marsh helped design the park.
Half of the new trails will feature a red clay material, sourced from Alabama, while the other half will be an asphalt, all-weather material, he said. They will be placed on a 30-foot-tall hill, known in the park as “Big Hill.”
The park also features the Ford Calumet Environmental Center with nature-based educational programming, spaces for nature walking and bird watching, a picnic and grilling area.
“The park is both a place for active and passive recreation,” said Chicago Park District spokesperson Irene Tostado.
The Chicago Park District said about 19,000 vehicles entered the park in 2022, with 21,000 in 2023, though they didn’t have numbers for how many people attended. As the park continues to expand, they expect this number to continue to grow, Tostado said in an email.
The new bike trails will be “a step-up” for experienced bicyclists and “provide vertical elements unique to this space for an amped experience,” she said.
Friends of Big Marsh has raised about $360,000 of the $1.5 million needed for the new trails. “The project will be completed in phases, if necessary,” Fitzgerald said, if the full amount isn’t raised by the time construction begins.
SRAM, the Chicago-based bicycle components maker, is a major donor. Builder’s Initiative, a philanthropic organization that partners with nonprofits, has also contributed to the project.
Fitzgerald said the trails will have something to offer those with little biking experience to seasoned professionals.
“We don’t want anybody to come to Big Marsh and say, ‘That’s not for me,’” he said. “We have options for anybody from a grandma on a Divvy bike to kids that are trying to see how high up in the air they can go.”
The hope is that the mountain bike trails at Big Marsh will lead people to check out mountain biking outside of the city, such as the Palos Trail System or mountain bike trails in Willow Springs, he said.
Ultimately, Fitzgerald said he wants people to think of Big Marsh Park as “one of the most amazing places in the city” and as a place where young kids and teenagers “don’t have to look over their shoulders.”
“I like thinking that Big Marsh, it’s in our city, but you don’t have to feel that way. You can just kind of be with nature and you could be with yourself on a bike and just enjoy it,” he said. “Hopefully you learn something about yourself and about the city we all love.”
Donations to support the bike trails can be made on Mightycause.
