Best bike parks in the USA?

First off, if I accidentally double-posted this or missed an existing thread, my bad! 🙂

Anyway, I started this because I wanted to get a conversation going about bike parks here in the States. I was doing some digging online and honestly, it feels like we don't have any real deal mountain bike parks nearby—nothing legit besides maybe that one spot out in the Midwest. If you guys know of any cool spots that popped up recently, please drop them in the comments! It makes me wonder, though... is there just zero interest in this stuff here, or is it just a massive lack of funding to actually build them? Like, how much land do you even need to pull off a serious park where both a total newbie and a hardcore pro can find something fun to ride? For those of you who have traveled, what’s the scene like over in places like Canada or Austria? Any insights?

Hopefully, a few people with some experience will jump in so we can really get this thing rolling. Catch ya later! 🙂

Any sane business owner would make their winter spots look amazing for summer crowds.

How?
Simple. Most bike parks in places like Canada or across the globe—focusing on areas with actual mountains and snow, since California isn't exactly the gold standard here—are actually just ski resorts. The infrastructure, like the lifts and everything, works perfectly for biking. You might just upgrade a gondola to hook up a bike or something similar.
Resorts that actually care about profit usually just run bike trails alongside the existing ski runs, so they aren't messing with the main slopes. Even if they cross a run, it’s usually just hitting a meadow before getting into the fun stuff in the woods.

Around here, politics is the main reason things fail or never even get off the ground.
Take Washington, D.C., for example—they don't even have a lift system. I can't think of any other city in the world that wouldn't jump at the chance to make money from that.
Then there's how Mount Rainier fell apart, and so on.

To make this work, you need a federal decision first since we're talking about national parks and stuff like that, followed by a solid private investor willing to dump a ton of cash into making it legit.
The second part? Won't happen. No entrepreneur is going to fund a hundred local politicians under the table just because that's how things work here.
And politicians don't care about bikes. What's the point? Just buy an Audi and drive around.

The only way this happens is if someone buys a few acres, brings in some dirt, and just digs and builds the whole thing themselves...
I doubt anyone like that exists...

So, long story short:
1. Politics has to be on board.
2. All our mountains are government-owned.
3. Nothing profitable ever succeeds here, so why would this?
4. We have the lifts, but they aren't running...

Think I've said it all.😁

Proof it can be done:
I think I read somewhere recently that Italy is pulling in more money from cycle tourism than from skiing in the Alps.

Bryan Evans77 said:Anyone with half a brain knows you gotta make your winter spots look good in the summer if you actually want to run a business...

.

I’m totally with you on this. People over in Canada have really figured out how to turn their bike parks into actual money-makers. Honestly, just load up the car, throw the bikes on the rack, and head straight for Canada.

Everything has been said. This thread can be locked.😁

I honestly believe that building a bike park here in the States from the ground up is basically a 100% guaranteed money pit...

Nah, it’s just that nobody here ever thinks long-term..
everyone just wants quick profits after year one to pay off their debts...

There’s no such thing as a roadmap or a ten-year plan—nothing's a big picture here..
The government doesn't even know what tomorrow looks like, let alone two years from now. And honestly? They couldn't care less..

We really need to bring in those five-year-olds! 🧐

Let me clarify my stance here
I honestly believe that building a bike park from the ground up over a twenty-year span is an absolute nightmare... just incredibly difficult...

Think about what "building" actually entails: you’re looking at leasing, securing concessions, or outright purchasing massive amounts of land for the park, plus constructing chairlifts, paving parking lots, erecting facilities... and then there's everything else that comes with it. From a purely financial standpoint, it is 1000% not worth it.
Now, if you were talking about adding features to an existing ski resort where 95% of the infrastructure is already in place, then we could have a conversation—though even then, the profit margins are questionable. But most ski resorts (especially across the European Union) receive significant subsidies from local governments and similar entities, which is why they stay operational.

To be specific, if we were looking for viable bike park locations in the US, you'd really only look at places like Aspen or Mount Whitney because they already have the lift systems established. Plus, there is the theoretical possibility for Mount Whitney if they ever installed a new gondola, or maybe somewhere like the Učka region if they got a new gondola one day too...

This is basically how they handle things over in Canada