The North Hills Side Of The Franklins: A Summer Weekend Playbook You Can Reach In Under Ten Minutes
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
Most of El Paso drives across town to reach Franklin Mountains State Park. From North Hills, you do not. The neighborhood sits directly against the eastern flank of the range, and a state park entrance sits at the end of Jon Cunningham Boulevard, less than three miles from most of the subdivision. That single fact reshapes what a Saturday morning can look like here.
This is a summer 2026 guide for people who already live in North Hills. It covers what actually changed on the mountain this year, where the trails start on your side, and how to build a half-day out of the park without driving out to Canutillo or across Trans-Mountain.
Franklin Mountains State Park has four main access points, and Tom Mays Unit off I-10 gets the traffic, the Instagram photos, and the parking lines. It is also the wrong choice for a North Hills resident on most days.
The Texas State Parks reservation page names the fourth access point plainly: "at the end of Jon Cunningham Blvd." That is the neighborhood's back door. McKelligon Canyon on the east side runs off Fred Wilson Road, Smugglers Pass sits near the top of Loop 375, and Tom Mays is on the far side of the range. Jon Cunningham is the one that opens onto the same escarpment you already see from your kitchen window.
The practical result: a hike that takes a Westsider forty minutes of driving takes a North Hills homeowner about the length of a podcast segment. If the summit trails are on your bucket list, Tom Mays is still the starting point. For everything else this summer, the north side is closer, quieter, and usually has parking.
In May 2026, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department added 1,054 acres to the eastern boundary of the park. The parcel sits on the side of the range that North Hills faces, and TPWD framed the acquisition as both an access improvement for the northeastern portion of the park and a way to curb urban encroachment.
Translation for someone standing in a North Hills driveway: the buffer between the last row of houses and protected state park land just got a thousand acres wider, and the northeast trail network has room to grow into it.
The park now covers 24,247 acres with more than 125 miles of multi-use trails, one of the largest urban wildernesses inside any U.S. city limits. Roughly a thousand of those acres were not park land four months ago.
That does not mean new signed routes on opening day. Trail planning at TPWD moves slowly, and much of the acquisition is undeveloped. What it does mean is that the pressure to develop that corridor is off the table, and the informal singletrack that riders and hikers have used on the eastern flank is now formally protected.
Inside the neighborhood itself, the 16-acre Chuck Heinrich Memorial Park on Andrew Barcena Drive functions as the primary mountain-bike trailhead for the entire North Hills trail region. Trailforks lists it that way, with Roundhouse and Lazy Cow as the two other main trailhead names in the same network. The park is named after a fallen El Paso police officer, and the parking lot doubles as the community bike-tool location.
A quick way to think about which trail to pick on a given morning:
| Trailhead | Best for | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Chuck Heinrich | First-time visits, dog walks, easy singletrack loops | Community bike tools on site |
| Roundhouse | Blue-level singletrack, weekend rides | Most popular parking location in the region per Trailforks |
| Lazy Cow | Shorter after-work rides and hikes | Less foot traffic than Chuck Heinrich |
| Mundy's Gap | Longer outings | 3.4 miles, the longest single trail in the North Hills network |
If you have watched cyclists gathering in the neighborhood in November, that is the El Paso Puzzler. The 35-mile and 15-mile courses both route through North Hills' trail system, and the mini-EPIC uses the same trailheads. You do not need to enter the race to ride the course. It sits open the rest of the year.
Summer heat is the argument against midday hiking in El Paso, and it is a good argument. The counter-argument is the gate schedule.
TPWD lists standard park hours as 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. That works in October. It does not work in July. From the first Saturday in April through the first Saturday in September, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday gate hours run from 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. instead. That extra hour and a half in the morning is the difference between hiking in seventy-degree air and hiking in ninety-degree air.
The park charges $5 per adult for daily entry. Kids twelve and under enter free. TPWD recommends reserving passes online because the park regularly reaches capacity, and Tom Mays fills first. The northeast entrance rarely does.
Two practical scheduling notes for the neighborhood:
Part of what makes North Hills work as a base for outdoor mornings is that the errand run afterward stays inside a five-minute radius. Sean Haggerty Drive is the neighborhood's spine, and North Hills Crossing at Gateway South sits at one end of it.
A short list of what the loop can look like:
None of this is new construction. What is new is the way the eastern boundary acquisition and the summer gate hours combine to make the same infrastructure feel like a properly built outdoor loop rather than a set of separate errands.
If this reads like a lot to keep track of, here is the compressed version. Try it once and see whether it changes how the neighborhood feels.
If you did the same trip from a Westside address, you would still be in the car.
We help people buy and sell homes across the El Paso area, and the question we get most often from clients considering North Hills is some version of "what is there actually to do out there." The honest answer is that the neighborhood is quieter than the entertainment corridors on the other side of US 54, and that trade is the whole point. What you get in return is a piece of the largest urban wilderness inside any U.S. city limits, reachable from your driveway before the sun clears the ridge.
If you already live here, that is your summer. If you are thinking about moving here, or selling here and want the marketing to lead with what actually makes the neighborhood valuable, Derek & DJ can help. Call or text us for a free 15-minute market evaluation, and we will talk through what your specific block looks like right now, gate hours included.
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