CEDAR CITY — Multiple agencies and community groups have given their sweat, money and time to preserve Thunderbird Gardens for future generations.

Thunderbird Gardens is located at East 900 South. City manager Paul Bittmenn said multiple agencies steward the area, including the city, the Bureau of Land Management and Southern Utah University.

Thunderbird Gardens is multi-use and provides recreation opportunities for hikers, mountain bikers, disc golfers and others, said Cedar City citizen and CEO of Kidder Communications Dan Kidder.

“It’s a really beautiful resource the city has,” he said. “It’s … (city) property. It’s what I like to call their ‘attractive nuisance.'”

The parking lot, which serves as a gateway to multiple trails, is littered with nails. Kidder has been working to clear these and other debris from the area with the help of the Friends of Thunderbird Gardens Facebook group, which he started with canyoneer Rich Carlson.

Kidder said they used a roller magnet and a rake to clear out an estimated 600 pounds of nails, filling 12 buckets. Additionally, when he was visiting the area for Search and Rescue training he later found all of his tires flattened with 13 nails embedded in the rubber.

Kidder said that many of the nails are leftover from pallet fires, adding that some pallets are made of specially-treated wood that can contain harmful chemicals that are released as gasses when burned. People don’t know what they could be breathing in as a result, he said.

“You have to be a special kind of stupid to build a pallet fire in the middle of a parking lot,” he said.

BLM recreation planner Dave Jacobson said this is a “funny trend.”

“Instead of people hiking back to that usual pallet-burning spot, they’ve just been having fires in the parking lot now,” he said. “We’re trying to get that trend to go away.”

Kidder said he has also noticed juniper trees being cut down, either near frisbee golf targets, possibly to reduce the game’s difficulty, or to build fires.

The volunteer group has had a great turnout for organized cleanups. Kidder said they disassembled fire pits and removed debris, like glass or couches.

In one case, he said someone dumped approximately 2,000 pounds of broken concrete and made a fire ring. Volunteers cleared most of it out, after which, it was filled in by the city. About a year later, recently deposited ashes, nails and glass stood in its place, he added.

Additionally, Kidder used an angle grinder to remove graffiti from the red stone, which he said was “very difficult” and took him about 12 hours.

“We’ve all got to be conservationists,” he said. “If we want to continue to have access to these great places, we have got to preserve them … but we’re not doing a very good job of it.”

Volunteers have done less graffiti removal and bonfire cleanup recently, said group administrator Keith Howells, adding that individuals from the disc golf and mountain bike communities have spent time picking up trash.

Iron Trailcraft, an all-volunteer nonprofit based in Cedar City also visited the nearby 13th Hole trailhead to ride the trail and reshape its siltier areas, according to its website.

Thunderbird Gardens

Briget Eastep, a professor at Southern Utah University and the chair of the Great Basin National Park Foundation, started volunteering at Thunderbird Gardens about 15 years ago. She said it used to be a place where people would party, “dump things and shoot things.”

“We literally took a dumpster full of stuff out of there every year,” she said.

In 2013, Eastep said Jacobson began working on the Iron Hills Trail System and having conversations with the city. Jacobson put in a lot of work on the project and built a good relationship with the city, she added.

According to a Memorandum of Understanding between Cedar City and the BLM, approved by the City Council in 2015, the city stood to benefit from the recreation area through potential increases in tourism, additional recreational opportunities and improved mental and physical health in the community.

Official trails were intended to help control unauthorized trail building. Additionally, they were designed to coincide with Cedar City’s master trail plan to link with existing and future trailheads and create a network from Fiddler’s Canyon to Shurtz Canyon, the document states.

BLM agreed to provide trash cans and remove garbage from trailheads, construct and maintain trails, and provide related signage, among other duties, the document states.

The bureau also maintains the restrooms, which a contracted employee cleans once a week during high-use seasons, Jacobson said. Bureau staff visit the site weekly or bi-weekly to clean up additional trash and empty garbage cans.

Kidder said there has been “amazing improvement” at the site due to the BLM’s efforts.

The city assists with maintenance by blading the roads and the Cedar City Police Department patrols the area, said Bittmenn, adding that maintaining the grounds is a collaborative effort.

Danny Strand, the Intergovernmental Internship Cooperative crew coordinator at SUU, applied for a Utah outdoor recreation grant as a graduate student to build the frisbee golf course, Eastep said.

City officials believed the course would attract more use of the area and it received a positive recommendation from leisure services, according to the Disc Golf Agreement between the city and SUU, which was approved in 2018.

The university is responsible for maintaining the disc golf course, city leisure services director Ken Nielson said.

Jason Ramirez, who was SUU’S former assistant vice president for Student Affairs and Dean of Students told City Council at the time, said increased traffic brought by the course could reduce vandalism in the area.

Kidder said he felt the university didn’t work with the other recreation groups that utilize the area. The course was installed in the main recreation area where locals used to have picnics but now do so less often due to the risk of getting hit with a frisbee. People should be cognizant of other users, he stressed.

The city, BLM and SUU all agreed to monitor the area for vandalism, shooting, dumping and other illegal activities, according to both agreements.

The bureu monitors a traffic counter on the road and when they first began collecting data, most visitation occurred between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m, but currently, most recreators arrive between 5-9 p.m, or whenever dusk is at a particular time of year. Jacobson said this could be related to a change in behavior trends.

Jacobson emphasized that Thunderbird Gardens is city property and belongs to the citizens, who should help maintain it so they can continue to enjoy it.

Additionally, Jacobson suggested that ownership of Thunderbird Gardens be handed over to a single entity so it can be better managed and improved upon.

Public land stewards

This fall, Eastep will teach the Color Country Urban Ranger class as part of the Outdoor Recreation Program. The class typically has four to seven students who learn to run a volunteer program and for the last 10 weeks of the semester, students will recruit volunteers and hit the trails to host a basic cleanup. Thunderbird Gardens stands to benefit from the program, she said.

“I’ve tried to slowly – over the last few years – develop an infrastructure for SUU students to get involved,” she said.

According to the 2021 Intergovernmental Internship Cooperative Annual Report, the program aims to create an “army of public land steward volunteers. The rangers patrolled for 492 hours, hiked 303 miles and hosted two cleanups.

“We’re excited about the future of this program and its ability to develop stewards for public lands in our region through volunteering to ‘hike with a purpose,’” the report states.

Eastep said other groups from SUU have also conducted “serious cleanups” at Thunderbird Gardens.

How citizens can help

At the trailhead, users have the option to “pay what you feel your experience is worth,” as seen on a kiosk in the parking lot, which also states there is no minimum use fee.

Funds collected there are used for upgrades, new amenities and the cleaning and maintaining of existing facilities, according to a BLM press release from 2019.

“We are doing our best to manage recreation and visitor services for a diversity of outdoor recreation demands while protecting and enhancing public lands and recreation opportunities,” Cedar City Field Manager Paul Briggs said in the release.

Jacobson said some people have been leaving bags filled with dog excrement next to the trail and encouraged those individuals to deposit them instead at trash cans available at the trailhead, adding that a “magical poop fairy” will not do so for them.

“That’s just creating more of a problem than just actual dog waste being on the side of the trail. That’s part of nature,” he said. “But once you put it in a bag, then you’re dealing with something that has to slowly decompose.”

Bittmenn asked the public to help keep the area clean and reminded citizens not to dump or burn, and that outdoor recreational burning is illegal within city limits without a permit. Due to several years of drought, the vegetation is dry, which combined with the area’s heavy wind, increases the risk of starting wildfires.

Additionally, those who open burn trash, waste material, construction or yard waste within city limits have committed a Class B misdemeanor, according to the city’s website. Those interested in setting large recreational fires must obtain a permit and follow outlined requirements.

City ordinance 17-17 (D) does allow for open burning in established burn pits at Thunderbird Gardens. However, Jacobson said that no such facilities are available at this time and any seen in the area are likely unauthorized.

Cedar City Police Chief Darin Adams said the department makes a concerted effort to patrol the area as often as possible to maintain their presence and deter criminal activity, adding that bicycle patrol officers began hitting the area more frequently with warmer weather.

Adams asked that individuals refrain from defacing or altering structures and to notify the police if others are seen doing so.

“It’s really important, I think, for the citizens to understand what a gem that is, that we have right in our own backyard and would ask that they be mindful of that and to treat it appropriately,” he said.

While Cedar City is a beautiful place, some in the community don’t appreciate the area and vandalize it, Kidder said in a promotional video.

“But if we all do our part, we can preserve these beautiful places for future generations,” he added. “We have a responsibility as a community to be active in preserving the beauty of our wild places. They aren’t making any more and if we allow these natural wonders to be destroyed, we’ll deny future generations the splendor of our natural world.”

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