In 2023, Bixby's city engineer told a Tulsa World reporter something that sounded almost like an admission. Jared Cottle put it plainly: "We're the only metro community not connecting in." Every other city in the Tulsa area, he meant, already tied into the region's shared trail network. Bixby had built plenty of trail. It just hadn't linked up.
That sentence explains a lot about why so many Bixby residents treat their trail system as two or three separate, disconnected walks instead of one. You park at Bentley Park, do a loop, and drive home. Or you park at Washington Irving Memorial Park & Arboretum, wander the wooded path, and turn around before you've noticed where it actually goes. Both halves have existed for years. Most people have never walked past the seam.
The Park Most People Stop At
Bentley Park is where the system starts for most residents, and it's easy to see why. The park spans 114 acres and has functioned for years as Bixby's anchor for organized recreation, with baseball fields, a splash pad, and a playground that draws families on weekend mornings. The splash pad runs seasonally, open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend, which means as of late August it's still running for another week or so before it closes for the year.
Back in 2012, the city put $5 million into expanding the Bentley Park Sports Complex, adding four new baseball fields to bring the total to eight, along with concession stands. At the time, Tulsa World reported the city already had about eight miles of jogging trails, and then-Mayor Ray Bowen said flatly, "We've already got one of the best in all of Tulsa County." That was true on its own terms. What it wasn't, yet, was connected to anything outside Bixby.
What's on the Other Side of the Bridge
The trail that leaves Bentley Park runs along the south bank of the Arkansas River, crosses at the old steel bridge near the US 64 and Memorial Drive junction, and lands you inside Washington Irving Memorial Park & Arboretum. This is where most of the historical texture lives, and it's a smaller park than Bentley by a wide margin. Washington Irving covers just 32.5 acres, named for the American writer who camped in the area in October 1832 during a federal expedition through Oklahoma led by Judge Henry L. Ellsworth.
Walk the wooded trail here and you'll pass a handful of things you won't find described on a typical parks brochure:
- A statue of Washington Irving seated on the porch of a replica of his home, Sunnyside
- The Laci Dawn Griffin Hill butterfly garden
- A memorial to the children killed in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing
- A piece of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center, part of a September 11 memorial
Most residents who've walked this stretch have seen at least one of these. Fewer realize the trail keeps going west from here, past the park boundary, into a segment that most people never bother to find.
Fourteen Years of Small, Unglamorous Projects
What makes Bixby's trail system worth understanding isn't any single ribbon-cutting. It's the accumulation. The same month in 2012 that Bentley Park got its $5 million sports complex expansion, the city also put $100,000 into extending the jogging trail at Washington Irving Memorial Park. That November, the city council awarded a $138,910 contract to Magnum Construction to extend the Fry Creek trail into two residential areas, Copperleaf and Fox Hollow, using bond money left over from an earlier expansion.
None of that made Bixby's trail system regional. It just made it longer within city limits. The connection Cottle was talking about in 2023 didn't happen until the year before, when Bixby finished a half-mile link between Washington Irving Park and a branch of the Fry Creek Trail on the city's west side, and was awarded a $500,000 grant from the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to extend another branch north toward the Creek Turnpike. City officials expected that phase to wrap within two years, forming a continuous trail about five miles long. The phase after that, actually tying into the Creek Turnpike system and closing the regional loop, was something Cottle described as five years out from 2023, which puts it somewhere around 2028. It hasn't happened yet.
How Far It Actually Goes Today
Here's the part most residents underestimate. Trail-mapping sources that track this independently of the city now describe the Fry Creek Trail as running about 3.4 miles from Washington Irving Memorial Park to East 21st Street, with a connection on the south end to the Bixby Trail and Bentley Park Trail adding roughly two more miles. Add it up and you get a connected route of about 5.4 miles, matching almost exactly the five-mile target city officials described building toward back in 2023.
Other trail databases measure the segments slightly differently, putting the Fry Creek leg closer to 2.9 miles depending on where they draw the start and end points. The discrepancy is a measurement question, not a disagreement about whether the trail exists. Either way, the walk from Bentley Park to the far western edge of Fry Creek is longer, by a real margin, than the loop most residents actually complete.
Finishing the Walk
If you've only ever done the Washington Irving loop, the extension is easy to find. Park at the lot off Memorial Drive, follow the trail west past the arboretum boundary, and you'll pick up the newer section of Fry Creek Trail that the city finished linking in 2022. It's a wider, flat multi-use path, about ten feet across, built to handle both walkers and cyclists.
Two things worth knowing before you go. Trail users have reported hawks and armadillos along this stretch, which is more interesting than alarming. And near the western end, close to the wastewater treatment plant, the smell can get noticeable under certain wind conditions. Neither is a reason to skip it. Both are the kind of detail you only know if you've actually walked it.
Where to Go After
Bixby's restaurant scene sits close enough to the trail system that finishing a walk and finding food doesn't require much of a detour. Johnson's Stepping Stone Cafe has built a long-running reputation as the breakfast spot locals default to. Meddys, known for its Mediterranean bowls, and Lisu Thai Kitchen, which relocated to Bixby and built a following on dishes like beef with green beans, both sit within easy reach of Memorial Drive. Cave Bar & Grill has become a regular host for casual weekend gatherings, and El Maguey Prime covers the Mexican end of things for anyone looking for something heartier after a few miles on foot.
None of this required a car trip across town. That's the actual point of fourteen years of small, unglamorous municipal projects: not a flashy new park, but a version of Bixby where the walk you already know how to do turns out to be longer than you thought, and the food afterward is a few blocks away either direction.
If you're getting to know Bixby, whether you've lived here for years or you're still learning where the trail actually ends, Philip Shain knows this part of the Tulsa metro well beyond the map. Let's Connect.
