The bikers didn't wait for the ribbon. On the morning of August 22, dozens of riders, kids and adults both, were already dropping into the berms at the new McKinleyville BMX Track and Park before officials had finished cutting the ceremonial ribbon at the gate. Once it was cut, they poured in behind it.
What most of the crowd probably didn't know, standing at School Road and Washington Avenue that morning, is how long that three-acre lot had been sitting there doing nothing. The McKinleyville Community Services District had owned the property since at least 2012 with no real plan for it. Fourteen years is a long time for a corner lot to stay empty in a town that keeps adding rooftops.
Why "park poor" mattered on this side of town
Back in 2022, when the district first pitched a design for the site, MCSD's Parks and Recreation Director at the time put a name to the problem: the neighborhoods south of Murray Road were, in her word, "park-poor." California has a rough standard that a park should sit within a half mile of every resident. On that stretch of McKinleyville, it didn't. Families in the subdivisions off School Road and Washington Avenue had a longer walk to swings and a basketball hoop than residents almost anywhere else in town.
That's the gap this project was built to close, and as of last week, it's closed. Every household on that side of McKinleyville now has a park inside the standard distance for the first time.
What actually opened on August 22
The finished park includes the BMX track itself, an inclusive playground, a basketball half-court, a pickleball court, and a picnic area, built with a $2.3 million grant from the state's Prop 68 Statewide Park Development Program. The track has one feature that separates it from most BMX facilities in the region: it's open to the public from sunrise to sunset, every day. Jason Orlandi, president of the nonprofit that partners with MCSD to maintain the track, has pointed out that most BMX tracks operate on a members-only schedule. This one doesn't. Show up whenever the sun is up and the gate is unlocked.
The land's path to this point traces back further than the ribbon cutting suggests. MCSD board president Dennis Mayo credited staff and volunteers at the ceremony, and he noted that the property was originally secured under the leadership of Norman Shopay, the district's general manager, who died in 2012, the same year the lot went undeveloped. He didn't live to see it built. The people riding those berms on August 22 were, in a real sense, using a park a former public servant fought to acquire more than a decade before it existed.
The other project on the other end of town
While one corner of McKinleyville got a new gathering spot this month, another piece of the town's outdoor footprint quietly went offline. Starting in mid-August, the Murray Road Parking Area and sections of the 599-acre McKinleyville Community Forest have been temporarily closed for the Murray Road Fuel Break Project, a wildfire prevention effort led by the Humboldt County Resource Conservation District in partnership with MCSD and Green Diamond Resource Company.
Here's how the two projects stack up against each other right now:
| Project | Location | Status as of late August 2026 | Why it's happening |
|---|---|---|---|
| BMX Track & Park | School Road & Washington Avenue | Open daily, sunrise to sunset | Grand opening Aug. 22, funded by a $2.3 million Prop 68 grant |
| Murray Road Fuel Break | McKinleyville Community Forest, Murray Road corridor | Partially closed, no confirmed reopening date | Wildfire fuel reduction along a key evacuation route to Fieldbrook |
Murray Road is the main road in and out between McKinleyville and Fieldbrook, which makes it the kind of corridor that shows up in wildfire planning documents. The work underway is reducing ladder fuels along that route, one of five projects funded through Phase VI of the county's Community Wildfire Protection Plan grant. MCSD has said it will post updates on its website and social media and reopen sections as soon as crews finish, but hasn't attached a firm date to that promise. If you usually walk the forest loop off Murray Road, check before you go.
How residents are shaping what the forest looks like next
The Community Forest isn't just being managed from the top down. MCSD has signed memorandums of understanding with several outside groups, including the Humboldt Trails Council, the Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association, and the Redwood Empire Endurance Riders, and two different volunteer groups run monthly workdays inside the forest itself:
- Volunteer Trail Stewards meet on the third Saturday of each month to build and maintain multi-use trails.
- The Mountain Bike Tribal Trail Alliance runs its own workday on the second Saturday of each month, starting at 10 a.m.
Both groups are working inside a forest that sits along the watersheds of Widow White Creek and Mill Creek, mostly second and third growth Sitka spruce, redwood, and Douglas fir. A formal Forest Management Plan and Trail Plan for the property have been in progress since a committee first met in 2024, with both documents expected to become public sometime this year. If you want a say in where the next mile of trail goes, or just want to know why a particular section stayed closed longer than expected, those Saturday mornings are where that conversation happens.
Two ends of the same season
It's easy to read a park opening and a trail closure as unrelated items on a community calendar. They're not, not really. Both are outputs of the same small district government working two ends of town at once this year, one project closing a recreation gap that sat open for fourteen years, the other trimming brush along the road residents would use to get out if the hills ever caught fire. Neither shows up on a map of McKinleyville that a newcomer would find on their own. Both are the kind of thing you only know if you're paying attention to what MCSD is actually doing this month, not just what the town looked like the last time you drove through.
If you're weighing what life actually looks like on this side of McKinleyville, from School Road to the forest edge off Murray Road, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground detail The Land Man Office tracks for clients looking at this part of Humboldt County. Reach out anytime you want a read on a neighborhood that goes past what's listed online.
