I got hopelessly lost the first time riding my mountain bike at O.P. Schnabel Park nearly nine years ago, ending up tangled in brush somewhere south of the park along the Leon Creek Greenway.
I’ve learned to navigate the park better since then, and now I find it a shady natural oasis where I can lose my worries, if only for a little while.
O.P. Schnabel is one of San Antonio’s large legacy North Side parks. The city bought the 202 acres off Bandera Road in 1964 and (un)originally named it Bandera Road Park. Aside from its more than 8 miles of concrete and dirt trails, the park has baseball and soccer fields, basketball courts and is home to a popular YMCA facility.
The park slopes uphill from west to east, with the subtle shift in soil types and other conditions creating an ecological transition from oak-dominated forest on the western side to rocky, Hill Country-esque Ashe juniper forest to the east. The east side also has an abundance of mountain laurels, which bloom purple and smell like grape jelly in early spring.
The top of the limestone bluff offers the best views of any San Antonio park besides Friedrich Wilderness Park and Eisenhower Park. From the gaps in the trees at the top of the cliff, visitors can look out over the neighborhoods and golf course to the east, with the low towers of the Medical Center rising in the distance.
O.P. Schnabel Park
Offers: Hiking, mountain biking, trail running
Location: 9606 Bandera Rd, San Antonio, TX 78250
Trail miles: More than 8 miles of concrete and dirt trails
Restrooms: Restrooms and drinking water at the Graff Pavilion at the park’s main parking lot.
A thin, rocky trail extends along the edge of the bluff, connecting these viewpoints, with a few loose, rocky trails heading steeply downhill. These downhill trails can be dangerous even on foot, so be careful using them to navigate down the bluff to the Leon Creek Greenway. The safe route is the concrete connector trail in the park’s southeast corner.
I’ve typically used O.P. Schnabel as a start point for mountain bike rides along the Leon Creek Greenway trail network. But the park also boasts a decent trail network of its own, with four main trail loops, plus a connector that joins these loops to the Leon Creek Greenway. Scattered among these main trails are countless small connector trails and game paths worn by the park’s large deer population.
I didn’t know until researching this post that the park was renamed after Otto Phillip Schnabel, an insurance salesman and local crusader for cleanliness who spent 40 years trying to clean up litter in San Antonio. A newspaper columnist nicknamed him “Old Pushbroom” for his work to hold community litter cleanups, fundraise for trash cans downtown, and rally others to the cause, according to a profile on this quirky civic figure written 30 years after his death in 1987.
Apparently, thanks in part to his efforts, San Antonio won first place in its division in the National Cleanest Town contest each year from 1952 through 1955. That seems kind of hard to imagine in a city that nowadays consistently lands on the Top 10 list of America’s “dirtiest” cities. (That list comes from a national lawn care service, so take its rankings with a blade of grass.)
Most write-ups of O.P. Schnabel Park call it “the cleanest little park in Texas.” I don’t know about that. The park is fairly clean compared to others in the city, in part because its creek beds are often dry and not receiving litter washed downstream. Still, I don’t think Old Pushbroom would have appreciated the plastic bags, bottles and polystyrene foam cups I found scattered in the brush.
The city’s outdated trail map for O.P. Schnabel Park includes five loops, but I count four of them. The Old Tower Climb concrete trail doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Instead, there’s a heavily used dirt path strewn with rocks and roots that extends between the access road and the concrete path at the top of the hill.
In the park’s northeast corner, the concrete trail passes near a cellular tower atop the limestone bluff overlooking Leon Creek. Dozens of vultures use the tower as a roost. I appreciate these scavenger birds for the service they perform in helping clean up carrion, though they’ve imbued the tower with a certain fragrance from their droppings.
On my visit to the park last week, I checked out the Big O.P. Loop for the first time. That sidewalk-width concrete trail starts near the pavilion next to the playground, cuts between the two sports field areas, and makes a circle on the eastern side of the park. In several areas, rushing water after heavy rains is eating away at the path’s foundations, but it remains pretty much intact.
My favorite trail at the park is the Sleeper Trail, a dirt singletrack path that circumnavigates the west side of the park. I like to ride it counterclockwise, starting near the gate off the park road at the north end of the park, just north of its two basketball courts. From there, the trail follows the park’s northern boundary, passing alongside the Little League fields and sloping downhill toward the typically dry French Creek. section has several sharp curves with banked corners that are fun to carve on a mountain bike.
After crossing French Creek, the trail begins to climb through forested hills, taking tight corners to avoid trees. Some sections are a little loose, technical, and surprisingly steep for such small hills. After heading south parallel to Bandera Road, the trail plunges into a bamboo forest clustered around the backside of a building materials store.
I don’t normally take kindly to invasive species, but riding through the dense green stands of bamboo seems to transport the visitor from South Texas to southern China, if only for a few moments. The fast-growing, giant, woody grass casts a lighter green hue than the rest of the forest. However, it’s clearly choking out all of the native plants, with only the oak trees tall enough to outcompete it for light.
After abruptly leaving the bamboo, the trail crosses the main park access road and begins to roughly follow the park’s southern border. It climbs through loose rock and roots uphill again as it heads east, eventually rejoining the concrete Bluff Loop trail. Mountain bikers often continue east, descending a steep hill with a few tricky sections and dropping into the Leon Creek Greenway.
While not as large or scenic as other North Side parks such as Friedrich, Eisenhower, and Phil Hardberger Park, O.P. Schnabel is worth a visit for residents from across the city. For me, the park remains a favorite access point for the greenway, but the park still has plenty to offer on its own.