Battle Creek Regional Park

After 70 Hiking Tip: This hike is paved and fairly level though there are other trails in the park that are unpaved. 

Check the website in the fall in case there are park closures for hunting.  In 2022, the park has areas closed from October 10-21 and 31 - Nov 2.

Nearby:  I recommend Los Ocampo Restaurant and Bar for lunch.  1751 Suburban Avenue (just by the I94 and White Bear Avenue intersection) Great food and comfortable, quiet and roomy location.

Description: Battle Creek Regional Park is part of the Ramsey County Park system.  It is a very accessible park, both in terms of walking surface and access from St. Paul - less than 5 miles east of downtown.  There are two main entrances to the park.  The west entrance is just off of Highway 61, but accessed via Winthrop Street.  This part of the park is hilly with trails winding through the woods and up the bluffs as well as the County Regional Trail that follows Battle Creek through a ravine and up to the eastern part of the park.  The east entrance is on Upper Afton Road just off of McKnight Road. There is a large parking lot here and, in addition to trails, there is a water park and picnic shelters.  This side of the park seems more open with a mix of grasslands and woods along the shores of various small lakes/ponds. 

The Hike: For our hike, we drove to the Upper Afton Road entrance and parked near the Water Park. There are options here for hiking both north and south of Upper Afton Road.  We hiked the northern route because the southern part was closed due to a controlled hunt (archery) for deer.

We hiked here on October 10th and the trees and grasses were showing their fall colors.  We came to watch birds and weren’t disappointed.  Even before we left the parking lot, we had seen 6 difference species.



While there are plenty of unpaved trails in this park, we followed the paved regional trail which wound past the picnic grounds, water park and three lakes.  The lakes were bordered with trees and we did, indeed, get to watch quite a few warblers flying about.  This was a very pretty walk.





The trails in this section of the park have several loops.  We looped one of the lakes and walked by one side of two others and then at the northwestern edge of the paved trail, we crossed McKnight Road at the cross walk,  turned left and followed the road for about a block to link up with the regional trail that follows Battle Creek into the ravine and down to Highway 61.  This part of the trail is in the woods. 

Unfortunately, we had to turn around about halfway down the ravine trail because much of the western side of the park was also closed due to hunting.  Still, we clocked 3.8 miles by the time we got back to our car and that was plenty for me.


Battle Creek Regional Park offers a nice variety of hiking.  We enjoyed our stroll along the paved paths. There are still plenty of trails here that we haven’t tried yet, so we will be back.

 Park Directions

Park Map


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