Six-thirty on a Saturday morning in July, the lower gate at Tom Mays Unit swings open and a handful of cars from Franklin Hills are already idling in line. That extended weekend schedule, six thirty to five instead of the usual eight to five, runs from the first Saturday in April through the first Saturday in September, and it exists because Texas Parks and Wildlife knows exactly who shows up early: the neighbors on the west side of the range who treat this gate the way other people treat their own driveway.
Almost every article written about Franklin Mountains State Park describes a different mountain than the one Franklin Hills residents actually use. Search for things to do here and you'll land on McKelligon Canyon, the amphitheater, the gift shop, the concert calendar. That's the east side, reached off Highway 54 and Fred Wilson Road, and it's a fine place to spend an evening. It is not the side Franklin Hills sits on. The park has four official access points, and the one that matters to this neighborhood is Tom Mays Unit, off the Canutillo/Trans-Mountain exit on I-10, a few minutes from the foothills where Franklin Hills homes back up to open desert.
Four Doors, One Mountain
Understanding which door belongs to which neighborhood changes how you plan a weekend, so it's worth laying out plainly.
| Access Point | Side of the Range | What's There | Who Defaults Here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tom Mays Unit | West | Visitor center, campsites, trailheads into Lost Dog and Ron Coleman | Franklin Hills, west side residents |
| Smuggler's Pass / Ron Coleman Trailhead | Summit of Trans-Mountain Road (Loop 375) | Parking lot, trail to McKelligon Canyon | Hikers crossing the range |
| McKelligon Canyon | East | Amphitheater, gift shop, concert series | East side, tourist itineraries |
| Jon Cunningham Boulevard | Northeast | Newer trailhead access near the recent land acquisition | Northeast El Paso |
Mountain bikers have their own informal version of this split. Riders who don't want to pay to enter through the main gate often ride the unofficial trail network off Redd Road instead, in the same general Lost Dog corridor west-side hikers already know. It's not an official trailhead and it won't show up on the park map, but it's the kind of detail that only surfaces once you've actually spent a season riding out there.
What Actually Changed This Year
The one piece of real park news in 2026 happened on the opposite side of the mountain from Franklin Hills, but it's worth knowing anyway. In a release dated May 14, 2026, Texas Parks and Wildlife announced it had acquired 1,055 additional acres for Franklin Mountains State Park from the city's Public Service Board, adding lower-elevation land on the northeast edge near Jon Cunningham Boulevard. Park superintendent Cesar Mendez described the acquisition as one that "extends the buffer zone all the way to Martin Luther King Boulevard," securing trailhead access on that side of the range and adding a permanent buffer against further development.
For a Franklin Hills household, this doesn't move your commute to Tom Mays or change anything about the Ron Coleman trailhead. What it does is put a hard stop on development creeping toward the mountain from the northeast, which matters if part of what you value about living against the foothills is that the view stays a view. The acquisition also protects habitat for desert bighorn sheep in the park's core range, according to the same release, which is a detail that shows up nowhere in the generic "visit the Franklins" content.
The Trash Nobody Advertises
The other real story from this year is less flattering, and it's specific to the exact trailhead west-side hikers rely on most: Smuggler's Pass, the parking area at the summit of Trans-Mountain Road where the Ron Coleman Trail comes down the mountain. Reporting from El Paso Matters in late May 2026 documented an ongoing illegal dumping problem in the ravines below the overlooks along Transmountain Road, near this trailhead. Rangers described ravines filled with hundreds of discarded tires, along with plastic bottles, cans, and even a sofa lodged in the brush below the lookout points.
The park's staff already maintains more than 120 miles of trail, and according to that same reporting, Texas officials have confirmed no additional staff will be hired to handle either the trash or the newly acquired acreage. Mendez put the scale of the problem plainly, saying rangers can clean daily and still not "put a dent in the amount of trash." If you park at Smuggler's Pass to start a hike, this is the honest state of that trailhead right now, not the postcard version.
The Loop Your Neighbors Actually Run
Set the news aside and the actual weekend routine for this side of the mountain hasn't changed much, because the terrain and the trails haven't changed. The named routes that come up again and again for west-side hikers are Ron Coleman and Comanche Peak, along with the North Franklin Peak summit trail for anyone chasing the 7,192-foot high point of the range. Ron Coleman itself runs 3.8 miles between McKelligon Canyon and Smuggler's Pass with about 1,750 feet of elevation change, and park staff generally recommend starting at the McKelligon end and having a car waiting at Smuggler's Pass rather than doing it as an out and back.
There's one seasonal detail worth building a trip around if you haven't done it before. Near West Cottonwood Spring, inside the Tom Mays side of the park, a stand of Mexican plum trees blooms for a short window in late March or early April. It's not a marketed event and there's no sign pointing you to it. You either know the timing or you miss it entirely.
A few things to actually carry, since there's no water anywhere on these trails:
- Three liters of water per person for anything longer than a short loop
- Sun protection and a hat, since much of the west-side terrain has little to no shade
- A downloaded trail map, since cell service is inconsistent once you're past the ridge line
- A hiking partner, which local search and rescue teams recommend regardless of trail difficulty
When Franklin Hills Crosses the Mountain
None of this means the east side never gets used. Cool Canyon Nights, the free Thursday night concert series at McKelligon Canyon Amphitheatre, just wrapped its 16th season on July 30, 2026, running weekly from mid-May with a patio stage act at six and a main stage show at seven, underwritten by WestStar so admission stayed free all summer. That series is done for the year, but the amphitheater's calendar hasn't gone quiet. As of this month, the venue still has shows on the books, including events on August 21, 22, and 26.
Getting there from Franklin Hills means driving the Trans-Mountain corridor over the summit and down the other side, past the same Smuggler's Pass trailhead where the trash problem sits. It's a deliberate crossing, not a default Tuesday errand, which is exactly why it works as an occasional plan rather than a routine.
The point of separating these two sides isn't trivia. It's that the value of a foothills lot in Franklin Hills has less to do with "being near Franklin Mountains State Park" in the abstract and everything to do with which specific door you use, how early you can get through it, and what condition it's actually in this year. Most guides never make that distinction because most guides are written for visitors crossing the whole city to get to one canyon. Franklin Hills doesn't have to cross anything. The mountain is already the backyard.
If you're curious how a specific lot's proximity to Tom Mays or the Redd Road corridor factors into what a Franklin Hills home is actually worth, that's the kind of hyperlocal detail Cornerstone Realty tracks street by street. You can browse current homes and lot positions on our Franklin Hills neighborhood page, or reach out directly when you're ready to talk specifics about your own address.
