Two neighbors on the same Tulsa street can both say they spent Saturday morning at Turkey Mountain and never once cross paths. One parked at the main lot off 67th and Elwood, walked the same loop she's walked since 2019, and came home saying nothing had changed. The other drove a little further south, crossed a new pedestrian beacon crossing, and spent two hours on trail that didn't exist before last summer. Both are right. Both are also only describing about a third of the mountain.
That's the part most casual visitors haven't caught up to yet. Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness has spent the last year or so adding two entirely new sections, and neither one shows up if you only ever use the entrance you've always used.
The Mountain Added Two New Wings Without Moving the Front Door
For most of its history, Turkey Mountain was one contiguous system anchored to the main entrance at 6850 S. Elwood Ave, the address most Tulsans still picture when they hear the name. The park opened there in May 1980 and grew in pieces over the following decades, eventually settling around 650 acres of oak-hickory forest above the Arkansas River in West Tulsa.
Then in July 2025, River Parks Authority cut the ribbon on an 89.5-acre addition called The Sanctuary, south of the original footprint, adding roughly 6 to 7 miles of new hiking and mountain biking trail. The naming wasn't accidental. Josh Christner, whose family foundation contributed $2 million toward the project, described the intent behind it plainly: the trails were meant to be "a destination where individuals and families can reconnect with the outdoors, with one another, and with themselves."
Around the same time, on the mountain's south end near 71st Street, River Parks finished building The Rock Yard, three acres of hillside converted into dirt jumps and bermed lines, which River Parks describes as the first facility of its kind in Oklahoma. It's built entirely for advanced mountain bikers and features stone hubs the park has nicknamed "Stone River Forts," with trail names like Janice Jumplin and Leon Hustle.
Add those two projects to the original core and the wilderness area now covers close to 750 acres, according to TulsaPeople's coverage of The Sanctuary's opening. Trailforks currently lists 34 miles of total trail distance across the system, still short of the 40 miles called for in the park's master plan, but a meaningful jump from where the mountain sat even three years ago.
Three Sections, Three Different Trips
The practical effect is that "going to Turkey Mountain" now means something different depending on which lot you use and what you're there to do.
| Section | Where it is | What's there | Best suited for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original core | Main entrance, 67th & Elwood | The mountain's original 30-plus miles of hiking and multi-use trail, the natural stone staircase, main pavilion and restrooms | Hiking, dog walks, family loops, the October haunted trail |
| The Sanctuary | South of the core, reached via new flashing-beacon pedestrian crossings | 89.5 acres and roughly 6 to 7 miles of trail opened July 2025 | Quieter hiking and riding away from weekend crowds |
| The Rock Yard | South end near 71st Street | Three acres of dirt jumps and bermed lines, Oklahoma's first dedicated bike jump park | Advanced mountain bikers and anyone who wants to watch rather than ride |
If your only reference point is the main lot, you've likely never set foot in the other two thirds of what now exists. That's not a knock on anyone's familiarity with the mountain. It's just a function of how fast the additions landed relative to how people form habits about a place they've visited for years.
The Fall Calendar Is Basically a Tour of All Three Sections
What makes this fall worth paying attention to, even if you've hiked Turkey Mountain a hundred times, is that the park's own event calendar has started to track the new geography almost exactly.
Labor Day weekend just wrapped, and with it the final leg of the Turkey Triple, the annual trail race series that traces back to 2004 and finishes each year at the lower parking lot of the original core with the Escape from Turkey Mountain race. This year's edition, run by Golden Driller Racing, sold out before race day.
Turkey Mountain's Haunted Trails and Fall Festival has become an October fixture at the main entrance, a three-quarter-mile trail walk through the older, more established forest that's been part of the mountain's identity for years. In past years it has run evenings from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on weekdays and started earlier, at 3:30 p.m., on weekends, with exact 2026 dates worth confirming closer to the season.
The mountain's long-running Monarchs on the Mountain tradition, now roughly a decade old, also falls in this window, marking the annual monarch butterfly migration through the park with educational programming timed to the season.
Then in November, the Cold Turkey Mountain Bike Festival returns for its fourth year, and this is where the newer infrastructure shows up directly. Friday night's Jump Jam and Whip Off competition happen at the Skyline session area, built for exactly this kind of jump riding, with the Tulsa skyline as the backdrop. Saturday's five-stage Enduro Party, by contrast, spreads across roughly 14 miles of the entire trail system, old and new sections alike. New for 2026, organizers have added a Sunday downhill race with a shuttle, so riders can hit the DH-specific trails without pedaling back up.
Line those four events up and you get a rough map of the mountain as it actually exists now: the historic core hosting the haunted trail and the anniversary butterfly event, the newer terrain hosting the bike festival's marquee jump competition, and the whole system stitched together once a year by the Enduro.
What This Means If You've Been Going to the Same Lot for Years
None of this requires becoming a mountain biker or rearranging your weekend. It just means the mountain you think you know has more to it than the loop you've been doing.
- Check current trail status before you go. River Parks posts real-time conditions on their site, and the park closes to protect trail surfaces after rain, so a Saturday morning trip can get cut short if you haven't checked ahead.
- The Sanctuary requires using the newer crossings. River Parks installed pedestrian crossings with rapid flashing beacons specifically so hikers and bikers can move between the original core and the new southern acreage safely, so look for those rather than trying to bushwhack a shortcut.
- Rentals are available if you want to try the newer bike terrain without buying gear. Tom's Bicycles Tulsa handles mountain bike rentals for the park, which is a low-commitment way to see whether the Rock Yard's terrain is your kind of riding.
- If you want to see the improvements up close before winter, the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition runs volunteer trail work days throughout the fall, a direct way to see firsthand how much of the mountain's upkeep depends on volunteer hours rather than city crews alone.
The mountain isn't hiding any of this. It's just that a park can double the ground it covers and still get described, by longtime users, in the same terms they've always used. Turkey Mountain in September 2026 is bigger, more varied, and more programmed than it was even two years ago, and the easiest way to notice is to park somewhere other than where you usually do.
If exploring more of West Tulsa has you thinking about how close you'd actually be to trails like these, or whether your current commute to the trailhead makes sense for where you want to be in five years, that's a conversation The Bradshaw Group has with Tulsa families all the time. Get a Free Home Valuation and let's talk about what your next move near the mountain could look like.
