For years, walking the Mt. Scott Creek corridor in Happy Valley meant stepping off the trail more often than staying on it. Hikers who logged the route described ducking onto Adoline Avenue for a couple of blocks, crossing streets, then picking the trail back up near 129th and Scott Creek Lane. It worked, but it was a patchwork, stitched together with sidewalks because the trail itself did not connect.
That started changing with a project the city targeted for a May 2025 finish: new asphalt pathways, a boardwalk, and a bridge crossing over the creek on the Mt. Scott Creek Trail, funded in part through an Oregon Department of Transportation Community Path Grant for local multi-use path improvements. Now that the work has had more than a year to settle in, the practical result is that a walk which used to require weaving through a neighborhood runs as one continuous route, and that is worth understanding if you already live here and have not walked it since the update.
What used to be three trips is now one loop
The Mt. Scott Creek Trail sits just shy of nine acres west of SE 129th Avenue, threading through forested ground close enough to several neighborhoods that you can reach a trailhead on foot. What makes it worth a second look this year is what it now connects to. The trail feeds into Happy Valley Park, and from the park's boardwalk you can pick up the Boomer Trail at Scouters Mountain for a forested ridge climb to the summit view. Strung together, the combined route runs roughly three miles one-way, a distance that used to exist only as separate, disconnected walks.
Here is how the pieces compare if you are deciding where to start:
| Route or park | Scale | Surface | Best suited for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mt. Scott Creek Trail | Core corridor just under 9 acres | New asphalt, boardwalk, bridge crossing | A short daily walk or a stroller-friendly loop |
| Happy Valley Park to Scouters Mountain | Roughly 3 miles one-way | Paved park paths into natural forest trail | A real morning hike without leaving the city |
| Hidden Falls Park | 21-acre park, short loop to the falls | Paved trail to a canyon-bottom bridge | An off-leash walk with a waterfall payoff |
Trailheads at SE Oregon Trail Drive and SE Boy Scout Lodge Road give you flexible starting points depending on which end of the loop is closer to your driveway.
The park that anchors all of it
Happy Valley Park is the reason this network functions as a system rather than a collection of unrelated trails. At 24 acres, it carries the splash pad, the skate area, the sports fields, and an all-abilities playground that earned a National Demonstration Site designation for its accessible design, with poured-in-place rubber surfacing across both play areas. A 0.75-mile paved loop circles the active side of the park, while a separate 0.3-mile boardwalk threads through the wetland where Mount Scott Creek draws waterfowl through most of the year.
The park is also where the city runs its Camp Canine day, pairing a guided group hike along the Mt. Scott Creek Trail with games and activities for dogs back at the park grounds. If you have a dog and have never taken the guided version of the walk, it is a low-effort way to see the trail with company instead of working it out from a trailhead map.
Where the loop actually ends
If you follow the connected route far enough, or drive separately to save your legs, Hidden Falls Park is the payoff most people do not expect from a 21-acre neighborhood park. A compact waterfall drops into Rock Creek behind a stretch of houses that most residents drive past without realizing it is there. A paved trail leads down to a wooden bridge at the canyon bottom, and dogs are welcome, which makes it one of the more popular off-leash destinations in this part of the city. The climb back up has a steep stretch that catches some visitors off guard, so it is worth treating as the workout portion of the walk rather than an afterthought.
The other Saturday fixture
Trails are one half of how Happy Valley actually spends its weekends. The other is the Happy Valley Farmers Market, which runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. from the first Saturday in May through the end of October at the corner of 132nd and Sunnyside Road. More than 100 vendors set up weekly, which is a large number for a market this size, and the mix leans toward small operators rather than chains. On Top Farms, run by Oregon City residents Caleb and Cindi Vick Beaudin with Caleb's brother Nate managing daily operations, sells fresh cherries during the summer harvest, a business that grew out of a family construction company and a shared interest in permaculture. Paisley's Bakery specializes in New Orleans-style beignets alongside artisanal cookies, and 503 Distilling sells canned craft cocktails made with local ingredients, a format built for a market crowd rather than a bar.
The market accepts Oregon Trail SNAP cards and WIC coupons, and it participates in Double Up Food Bucks, which matches SNAP spending dollar for dollar in two-dollar increments up to twenty dollars per visit at the information booth. Dogs are welcome on a leash. When the outdoor season ends in late October, the market does not disappear entirely. It returns in December as a Holiday Market at Clackamas High School, with vendor counts reported as high as 350, a scale that makes the summer market look modest by comparison.
Why the timing matters
None of this is new information if you have lived in Happy Valley for years and already have your own version of the Saturday routine. But the trail connection is genuinely recent, finished only last year, and it changes the math on what counts as a reasonable morning walk. A route that used to mean choosing between three separate, disconnected destinations now reads as one continuous option, with the farmers market sitting close enough to the Sunnyside corridor that a market run and a trail walk can share the same Saturday morning without much extra driving.
If you moved in before 2025, the version of this network you remember is not quite the one that exists now. If you moved in after, you may not realize how recently the pieces came together, or that the patchwork it replaced required treating neighborhood sidewalks as part of the trail itself.
Either way, it is worth walking the full connected route this fall if you have not already. The connection is still recent enough that plenty of longtime residents have not folded it into their regular rotation, which makes now as good a time as any to start.
If you are thinking about Happy Valley from the outside, whether that means an upcoming move, a change in space needs, or simply curiosity about what daily life looks like here beyond the listing photos, Lee Realty Group knows this city block by block. Let's Connect.
