Beverly Bike Park

Although many people within the Midwest don’t consider mountain biking as a very popular sport there are a large amount of hidden trails and parks around the rolling terrain within this region including many in Iowa, considered the “Corn State”. Within eastern Iowa there are many sets of trails that allow for the recreational activity of mountain biking to take place. One of these secluded plethoras of trails can be found within the confines of the city of Cedar Rapids.

Beverly park, established and preserved by the Linn county preservations committees have allowed for this block of land known as Beverly park to be transformed into a set of mountain bike trails that weave through the endangered native trees and plants of eastern Iowa. The group of people that maintain these trails received the name LAMBA, which stands for Linn Area Mountain Bike Association. This association consists of members throughout the Linn county corridor that share similar beliefs and values centered on the preservation and health of the natural areas of the community and the support of single track mountain biking.  This group plans mountain bike events, builds and maintains trails, and helps and supports the committee in many different ways.  Beverly Park along with many other groupings of trails are headed up by this committee including Thomas Park, Squaw Creek, and Sugar Bottom Park. This group allows for the growth of mountain bike trails within the community and has increasingly taken off in support and activity within the past couple years.

This first set built by LAMBA, being Beverly Park is nestled within a small forest in the middle of the urbanized part of south western Cedar Rapids. Someone might not expect for mountain bike trails to be found right within the confines of a city, but this park is an exception, which allows for easy and quick access to some high quality single track mountain biking. So as I said Beverly Park consists of mostly single track and cross country trials which range in difficulty based on the rider’s capability. With most of the trails oriented towards the intermediate riders the 5 miles of trails found here are easily navigated and can be ridden by most people without any serious injury possibilities. Along with these rolling set of intermediate trails marked as blue squares, there are also many features and technical sections that allow for the expert riders to enjoy a challenge. Some of these features include logs, rocks, small drops, berms, steep inclines/declines, sharp and narrow corners and some small table tops and jumps. These hidden trails snake through a large portion of highly shaded forest along with scattered areas of grass lands. Like many trails in the western United States Beverly Park allows for high quality mountain bike riding within the gates of a city based on many reviews like mine who have ridden there many times and am part of the committee known as LAMBA.

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