Erwin Park Brings Prairie Restoration and Trail Riding to McKinney

North of McKinney, Erwin Park is a rougher kind of outdoor space than a tidy neighborhood park. Across its 212 acres you'll find three pavilions, 12 designated campfire sites, and a trail system that runs from a natural-surface path into miles of mountain-bike trail kept up by the Dallas Off-Road Bicycle Association.

It's also a working prairie. The park carries on Blackland Prairie restoration, with ongoing planting of a seed mix of dozens of native wildflowers and grasses — the same tall-grass cover that once blanketed this corner of the county before the plows and the rooftops.

For anyone living near north McKinney or out on the rural county roads beyond it, Erwin is the closest place to walk into that older landscape. The campfire sites are the draw on a cool evening, and the singletrack rides best when the prairie clay has had a few dry days to firm up.