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The best US cities for running trails

There are two honest ways to answer "which city is best for trail running", and they give different answers. The first is raw count — how many distinct running trails, greenways and rail-trails a city actually has, which is what matters if you live there and want variety for years. The second is trails per 100,000 residents, which is what matters if you want to be able to run without driving, and which rewards mid-size cities that quietly built out a greenway network. Both lists are below. For reference, the national rate is about 9.38 trails per 100,000 residents.

Most running trails, by count

Houston, TX tops the country with 53 trails in the directory. Big cities dominate this list by construction — but the gap between similarly sized cities is the interesting part, and it usually comes down to whether the region committed to a greenway or rail-trail network.

#CityTrailsPopulationPer 100k
1 Houston, TX Texas 53 2,390,125 2.2
2 Pittsburgh, PA Pennsylvania 53 307,668 17.2
3 Dallas, TX Texas 50 1,326,087 3.8
4 St. Louis, MO Missouri 47 279,695 16.8
5 Chicago, IL Illinois 46 2,721,308 1.7
6 Kansas City, MO Missouri 46 516,032 8.9
7 Miami, FL Florida 45 487,014 9.2
8 Austin, TX Texas 44 993,588 4.4
9 Atlanta, GA Georgia 43 520,070 8.3
10 Los Angeles, CA California 43 3,878,704 1.1
11 Louisville, KY Kentucky 42 — —
12 Philadelphia, PA Pennsylvania 41 1,573,916 2.6
13 Salt Lake City, UT Utah 41 217,783 18.8
14 Cincinnati, OH Ohio 40 314,915 12.7
15 Phoenix, AZ Arizona 40 1,673,164 2.4
16 San Antonio, TX Texas 39 1,526,656 2.6
17 Fort Worth, TX Texas 38 1,008,106 3.8
18 El Paso, TX Texas 37 681,723 5.4
19 San Diego, CA California 35 1,404,452 2.5
20 Las Vegas, NV Nevada 33 678,922 4.9
21 Minneapolis, MN Minnesota 33 428,579 7.7
22 San Jose, CA California 33 997,368 3.3
23 Seattle, WA Washington 33 780,995 4.2
24 Tucson, AZ Arizona 33 554,013 6
25 Albuquerque, NM New Mexico 31 560,326 5.5
26 Birmingham, AL Alabama 31 196,357 15.8
27 Columbus, OH Ohio 31 933,263 3.3
28 Oklahoma City, OK Oklahoma 31 712,919 4.3
29 Rochester, NY New York 31 207,282 15
30 Charlotte, NC North Carolina 30 943,476 3.2
31 Colorado Springs, CO Colorado 29 493,554 5.9
32 Denver, CO Colorado 29 729,019 4
33 Fremont, CA California 29 228,192 12.7
34 Green Bay, WI Wisconsin 29 106,311 27.3
35 Portland, OR Oregon 29 635,749 4.6
36 Ann Arbor, MI Michigan 28 122,925 22.8
37 Indianapolis, IN Indiana 28 900,896 3.1
38 Jacksonville, FL Florida 28 1,009,833 2.8
39 Knoxville, TN Tennessee 28 198,722 14.1
40 Boston, MA Massachusetts 27 673,458 4

Most running trails per resident

Draper, UT leads at 41.9 trails per 100,000 residents. This is the list that predicts whether you can run somewhere good from your front door. To keep it meaningful we only rank cities with at least 50,000 residents and at least five trails — otherwise a small town with a big park system wins every time on a sample of two.

#CityTrailsPopulationPer 100k
1 Draper, UT Utah 21 50,166 41.9
2 Olympia, WA Washington 23 56,271 40.9
3 La Crosse, WI Wisconsin 20 51,049 39.2
4 Marietta, GA Georgia 24 63,122 38
5 Novato, CA California 19 52,311 36.3
6 Manhattan, KS Kansas 19 54,700 34.7
7 Chapel Hill, NC North Carolina 22 64,028 34.4
8 Kalamazoo, MI Michigan 25 73,290 34.1
9 Glendora, CA California 17 50,101 33.9
10 Logan, UT Utah 19 56,770 33.5
11 Bothell, WA Washington 17 51,770 32.8
12 Battle Creek, MI Michigan 17 52,205 32.6
13 Pocatello, ID Idaho 19 58,231 32.6
14 Twin Falls, ID Idaho 18 55,589 32.4
15 Cupertino, CA California 19 58,710 32.4
16 Bentonville, AR Arkansas 20 61,791 32.4
17 Greenville, SC South Carolina 24 74,371 32.3
18 Corvallis, OR Oregon 20 61,993 32.3
19 Dubuque, IA Iowa 19 58,987 32.2
20 San Rafael, CA California 19 59,961 31.7
21 Fort Pierce, FL Florida 16 50,805 31.5
22 Sarasota, FL Florida 18 57,764 31.2
23 Bozeman, MT Montana 18 57,894 31.1
24 St. Charles, IL Illinois 16 52,511 30.5
25 Santee, CA California 18 59,104 30.5
26 Santa Cruz, CA California 19 62,581 30.4
27 Summerville, SC South Carolina 16 52,625 30.4
28 Owensboro, KY Kentucky 18 60,675 29.7
29 Harrisburg, PA Pennsylvania 15 50,649 29.6
30 Ypsilanti, MI Michigan 16 54,760 29.2
31 Eden Prairie, MN Minnesota 18 62,905 28.6
32 Wake Forest, NC North Carolina 16 56,764 28.2
33 Richland, WA Washington 18 64,372 28
34 Albany, OR Oregon 16 57,156 28
35 Coeur d'Alene, ID Idaho 16 57,355 27.9
36 Springfield, OH Ohio 16 58,138 27.5
37 Rapid City, SD South Dakota 22 79,894 27.5
38 Lancaster, PA Pennsylvania 16 58,441 27.4
39 Grapevine, TX Texas 14 51,320 27.3
40 Duluth, MN Minnesota 24 87,986 27.3

How this is counted

A "trail" here is one catalogued listing with proven runnable paths — a greenway, rail-trail, park trail system, riverwalk or singletrack loop. Counts are by the city the trail sits in, which means a metro area's trails are split across its suburbs rather than pooled: a city ranking is not a metro ranking, and a runner in a big metro has more than the city row alone suggests.

Populations are US Census estimates for the incorporated place. Because city limits are drawn very differently from state to state, the per-capita list rewards cities whose boundaries include their park land and penalises tightly drawn ones — read it as a strong signal, not a verdict.

Nothing on this page is paid or sponsored, and no city can submit itself.

Want the state-level numbers? The State of Running Trails in America ranks every state and offers the full CSV, and the surface report covers what those trails are actually made of.