Explore Lebanon Hills Regional Park's Four Distinct Sides

Ask someone in Eagan or Apple Valley what Lebanon Hills is, and you'll get the same answer almost every time: it's the park with the beach off Cliff Road. That's not wrong. But it's the equivalent of describing a house by its front porch. Lebanon Hills Regional Park covers nearly 2,000 acres (1,869, to be precise) across Eagan and Apple Valley, making it the largest park in the entire Dakota County system, and it has four separate entrances that each open onto a different version of the place. Most residents have only ever used one.

That's the part worth sitting with. The park you know depends entirely on which trailhead you park at, and if you've never used more than one, you've never actually seen most of what's inside those 1,869 acres.

One Name, Thirteen Lakes, Four Very Different Entrances

Lebanon Hills holds 13 lakes and ponds, connected by a mix of hiking trails, a portage canoe route, mountain bike singletrack, and bridle paths. The park's own trail map treats these as one continuous system, and geographically they are. Functionally, they're not. A family pushing a stroller around Jensen Lake and a mountain biker grinding through the West Trailhead's rock gardens might as well be in two different parks that happen to share a name.

Here's the quick version of who ends up where:

• The Visitor Center (860 Cliff Road, Eagan) — Schulze Lake Beach, canoe and kayak rentals, naturalist programs, the park's main gateway
• Jensen Lake Trailhead — a two-mile loop, a playground, a large picnic shelter, and a canoe carry-in launch, built for a shorter visit
• Holland Lake Trailhead — a fishing pier and picnic shelter on one of the county's two designated beginner-friendly lakes
• West Trailhead — singletrack mountain biking and the steepest, least-traveled hiking terrain in the park

There's a fifth, quieter corner too: an equestrian trailhead with horse trailer parking and roughly ten miles of wooded bridle trails that most non-riders never even know exist.

None of these are secret. But most people default to the one closest to home or the one their coworker mentioned, and then stop exploring. That's a shame, because the other sides of the park each solve a different problem the beach entrance can't.

The Visitor Center Side Is Running on a Deadline

If you've been meaning to get out on the water, the clock is closer to running out than you'd think. Dakota County's canoe, kayak, and paddleboard rentals at the Lebanon Hills Visitor Center run through September 7, 2026, which is also Labor Day this year. That leaves just over two weeks. Premium portaging canoes rent for $35 for a half day and $55 for a full day, with paddles and lifejackets included, and reservations can be made up to seven days out. Paddleboards are restricted to Schulze Lake itself, but canoes and kayaks can follow the portage route out to Portage, O'Brien, and Cattail Lakes, a short chain that locals sometimes use as a practice run before a real Boundary Waters trip.

Schulze Lake Beach, next to the Visitor Center, is free to swim and free to park, with a sandy shoreline and a bath house for changing. There are no lifeguards, so swimmers stick to the buoyed area, but the water is clear enough that it's a genuine alternative to the more crowded beaches closer to Minneapolis. Once Labor Day passes, both the beach hours and the rental fleet go dormant until next summer, and that entire quarter of the park quiets down until winter programming picks back up.

Jensen Lake Doesn't Try to Be Everything

If the Visitor Center side is built for a full afternoon, Jensen Lake Trailhead is built for an hour. The two-mile loop around the lake is flat, well marked, and short enough to do with a toddler or a dog that gets bored easily. There's a playground, a large picnic shelter, and a carry-in canoe launch on the west end of the park for anyone who owns their own boat and doesn't need the rental counter. It's the entrance people default to when they want the park without committing to a whole day of it, and that's exactly why it works.

Holland Lake Is Where the Regulars Fish Without an Audience

Holland Lake and McDonough Lake carry the Minnesota DNR's "Fishing in the Neighborhood" designation, a program built around lakes that are easy for beginners to fish successfully. Holland's trailhead has a fishing pier and a picnic shelter, and it connects into the rest of the park's trail system, but it doesn't get the foot traffic the beach side does. Anglers who know the park tend to treat this as their spot precisely because most visitors never make it this far in.

The West Trailhead Belongs to a Different Kind of Local

Mountain bikers already know this corner of the park by name. The West Trailhead has more than 12 miles of singletrack, and riders who've covered trail systems across the region regularly rank it among the best in the Twin Cities for technical terrain. The hiking trails on this side are the toughest in the park too, with steep, rocky sections that run roughly four miles per loop, a real departure from the flat, manicured feel most people associate with metro parks. If your image of Lebanon Hills is a gentle lakeside stroll, the West Trailhead will correct that fast.

What's Quietly Changing This Fall

There's a bigger shift happening across the park that has nothing to do with the calendar and everything to do with what's growing, or not growing, along the trails. Dakota County is in the middle of restoring more than 1,100 acres of prairie and forest within Lebanon Hills and has planted more than 3,000 new trees and shrubs as part of that work. Some of it is a response to the emerald ash borer, which was first discovered in the park back in 2014 and has been thinning the tree canopy in sections ever since.

Part of the current effort is invasive plant removal, mainly buckthorn, which crowds out the native prairie, savanna, and woodland habitat the county is trying to bring back. An initial removal push wrapped up by the end of March 2025, with a first follow-up pass that fall and a second one scheduled for this fall, meaning the next round of clearing is happening within the next couple of months. If you walk a familiar trail this October and notice more open sky through the canopy or fewer tangled shrubs at ground level, that's not neglect. That's the plan working.

The Park Doesn't Actually End at Labor Day

The beach closing and the rental fleet going into storage can make it feel like Lebanon Hills shuts down for the season, but the programming just changes shape. Forever Wild Family Fridays run on the first Friday of the month, pairing an early evening hike with a fireside nature talk. In February, Trails by Candlelight lights the park's cross-country ski and snowshoe trails for a walk that regulars plan their whole winter around. The sledding hill opens once there's enough snow, and the park's retreat center keeps hosting groups well past the point most people assume the park has gone quiet. Along the trail near Schulze Lake, the county even runs a rotating Story Walk, posting pages from a children's book every fifteen to twenty yards so families can read as they hike.

None of this requires the beach to be open. It just requires knowing the park has more than one season and more than one entrance.

The Takeaway for Anyone Who Thought They Knew This Park

The next time someone asks what there is to do in Dakota County, Lebanon Hills is still the right answer. It's just a bigger answer than most people give it credit for. Four trailheads, thirteen lakes, a fishing program built for beginners, a mountain bike network serious riders travel for, and a restoration project quietly reshaping the landscape underfoot all live inside the same set of park boundaries. If you've only ever parked at the Visitor Center, you've seen one park. There are three more waiting on the other sides of Cliff Road.

If you're already part of this community and just getting reacquainted with your own backyard, we're glad to be your neighbors. And if you know someone who's still weighing whether Dakota County is where they want to put down roots, Michael Favre and the team are always happy to talk through what makes this corner of the Twin Cities worth choosing. Let's Find Home.