Every trail map Little Elm has ever handed out starts in the same place: the water. Walk into any conversation about getting outside here and someone mentions the beach, the Lakefront, a loop that eventually curves back toward Lewisville Lake. That has been true for as long as the town has had trails worth naming.
It stopped being universally true in December 2025, when the town opened a 4.25-mile trail at Union Park that has no shoreline in it at all. It sits north of U.S. 380, on a wooded 35-acre hill, and it includes something Little Elm has never had before: a dedicated bike skills course and mountain bike terrain. If you have spent years assuming the good trails are the ones near the beach, this one is worth knowing about, because it is built for a different kind of ride entirely.
The Old Trail Map
Little Elm's existing network reads like a shoreline itinerary. The Cottonwood Trail is a mile and a half of rustic wood chip path that ends near Lobo Lane, shaded and quiet. The Johnny Broyles Nature Trail is just under a mile, a mix of ten-foot-wide concrete and crushed granite tucked into the north end of Little Elm Park. The Lakefront Trail runs about four miles of crushed granite connecting the Hula Hut and Hydrous area to McCord Park, with fishing access points scattered along the way. Hart's Branch links the Lakefront Trail at Eldorado Parkway over to Walker Lane, a paved connector through residential streets rather than a destination on its own.
| Trail | Length | Surface | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cottonwood Trail | 1.5 miles | Wood chip | Canopied, ends at Lobo Lane |
| Johnny Broyles Nature Trail | Just under 1 mile | Concrete and crushed granite | Loop inside Little Elm Park |
| Lakefront Trail | About 4 miles | Crushed granite | Connects Hula Hut/Hydrous to McCord Park |
| Union Park Multi-Use Trail | 4.25 miles | Natural surface with skills features | Wooded hill, bike skills and mountain bike terrain |
Every one of those older paths shares a surface and a shape. They are flat, they are paved or graveled, and they exist to get a walker, jogger, or casual rider from one point along the water to another. None of them ask anything of a rider beyond steady legs and a bit of time.
What Opened Off the Water
Union Park is Little Elm's fourth major community park and the first one built along the University Drive corridor rather than the lake. The park itself sits atop a hill, with an open-air pavilion looking out over the grounds, a layout that has more in common with a state park overlook than with the flat lawns around Little Elm Park. The new multi-use trail winds through that terrain rather than around a beach.
What makes it different isn't just the location. It's the first trail in town built with skills features and mountain bike sections, the kind of terrain that asks a rider to actually navigate obstacles instead of coasting along a straight, level path. For anyone who has driven to Frisco or farther for that kind of riding, there is now a version of it inside Little Elm's own town limits, on the side of town that has spent years being the newer, less-covered half.
Nobody's Parks Budget Built This Alone
As the Little Elm Journal reported, the trail came together through an arrangement that says something about how fast this side of Little Elm is growing. It was a partnership between Hillwood Communities, the developer behind the surrounding Union Park neighborhood, Highway 380 Municipal Management District No. 1, the special district that helps finance infrastructure along that corridor, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
The labor tells its own story. Volunteers, including Eagle Scouts from Scouting America Troop 388, along with homeowners and residents from the surrounding area, helped clear the path and add soil to control erosion, work valued at nearly $600,000. Little Elm's Mayor, Curtis Cornelious, called it a welcome addition for the region when the trail opened.
It's a different model than the town simply extending its existing shoreline paths. This one grew out of the same infrastructure that's building homes and roads on the 380 side of town, financed in part by the entity that exists specifically to fund that corridor's growth, and finished with volunteer sweat rather than a line item in a parks budget.
If you're headed there: the entrance sits at 4911 Union Park, north of U.S. 380. The park also has a public dog park, the Union Park Bark Park, maintained by Hillwood and open to residents beyond the immediate neighborhood. Like most of Little Elm's parks, entry is free. The only fee anywhere in the system is the seasonal parking charge at Little Elm Park's beach lot during summer weekends.
If You Live on the 380 Side of Town
For residents in Union Park, or anywhere along that stretch of 380, this closes a gap that has existed since the neighborhood went in. Until now, anyone who wanted real trail variety, something beyond a flat loop around a pond, had to drive to the Lakefront district or further out. The new trail puts that kind of riding within the neighborhood itself, connected to the same Central Park that already has the pool, the pickleball courts, and the ninja fitness stations.
It also changes what a Saturday morning can look like without touching the water at all. A ride that starts at the Union Park trailhead, works through the skills features, and loops back to the pavilion is a complete outing on its own, no beach parking, no drive to the Lakefront, no waiting for a weekend slot on the sand.
Two Centers Instead of One
For most of Little Elm's history as a trail town, there has really only been one center of gravity: the water. Every path either touched the shoreline or existed to connect you to something that did. The Union Park trail is the first real exception, a piece of outdoor infrastructure that stands entirely on its own, built around a hill and a stretch of woods instead of a beach.
That doesn't make the Lakefront any less central to how most of the town spends a weekend. It does mean that for the growing number of residents living north of 380, the town's outdoor life no longer requires a trip to the water to feel complete. Little Elm now has two answers to the question of where to go for a good trail, and for the first time, one of them has nothing to do with the lake at all.
If you're weighing what life actually looks like in a specific pocket of Little Elm, from the trail out your back door to the drive to school or work, the DiBella Team spends its days paying attention to these details across North Texas. Reach out anytime you want a local read on a neighborhood before you make your next move.
