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Herriman Boy Scout proposes rebuilding the city’s disc-golf course in a new location

Aug 22, 2019 04:21PM ● By Justin Adams

Enoch Hopkinson presents his plan for a new city disc-golf course to the Herriman City Council. (Justin Adams/City Journals)

By Justin Adams | [email protected]

A popular city amenity that closed in 2018 may see a return to a different location thanks to the hard work of a local Boy Scout. 

Last year, the Herriman City Council voted to close a popular disc-golf course that ran along the Rosecrest Park trail after it received complaints of people trespassing into neighboring backyards to retrieve ill-thrown discs. 

“I have my playground for my children, and I’ve come home many times to see our back gate left open,” said Councilman Clint Smith at the time. “I want to be able to send, like any neighbor, their kids into their backyard to play there without worrying about somebody intruding into their space, a stranger.” 

Enoch Hopkinson was one of the regular users of that course.

“I was sad when they took it down,” said Hopkinson.

While playing a disc-golf course in Highland, he learned that the course was designed and built as an Eagle Scout project. That gave him an idea to bring disc-golf back to Herriman as his own Eagle project. 

Hopkinson reached out to city leaders and started working with the Parks Department to come up with a solution. 

“I thought it was really incredible that we had this fine resident coming to us with a solution instead of asking us what we were going to do about it,” said city Parks Department Director Wendy Thomas. 

Hopkinson’s parents were surprised at how quickly the city responded to their son. 

“I think the city has been amazing,” his mother, Tiffany, said. “They’ve been so supportive of him. They responded to his emails right away. They connected him to the right people right away. They really treated his idea as legitimate.” 

On Aug. 14, Hopkinson visited the Herriman City Council to present the plan that he had developed, with the help from a few city departments.

The plan proposes installing the disc-golf baskets (which the city still retains from the previous course) along the Diamondback Trail, located behind Blackridge Reservoir. 

“The benefits of this location is that there’s no private property issues, which was the problem with the previous course,” Hopkinson told the council. 

City Council members raised a few concerns, such as conflict with existing users of the trail and the mountainous topography of the area.

Hopkinson pointed out that the course is designed in such a way that users would never throw their disc across the trail. As for the topography concerns, Hopkinson said that having some slope and altitude changes is no problem for disc-golf; in fact, it would attract avid players who enjoy more challenging courses. 

The consensus from the city council was general support for the idea, but they stressed the need to study the project’s feasibility and impacts before they proceed. 

Whether or not the new disc-golf course actually gets built, the process to make it this far has been a valuable one for Hopkinson. 

“It’s exciting to see him get involved,” said his dad, Aaron. “I’m proud of him that he’s willing to get up in front of that many people to share his thoughts and ideas. It’s a good experience for someone his age.”