10 Best US Mountain Bike Towns with the Lowest Cost of Living

10 Best US Mountain Bike Towns with the Lowest Cost of Living
Singletracks | March 12, 2018
By: Greg Heil

#8 Canon City, Colorado

COL Index: 93.6
Median Home Price: ~$150,000
Population: 17,000
Miles of Singletrack: ~140

Colorado. It seems that we can barely get a paragraph out without mentioning Colorado in some way. With world-class mountain biking and some of the biggest mountains in the continental United States, it’s no wonder that so many mountain bikers and outdoor enthusiasts want to move here. Denver often cracks lists of the fastest-growing cities, placing #23 in 2017.

The problem? Colorado is expensive, pretty much everywhere in the state. While real estate prices haven’t reached California levels yet, trying to find a Colorado town to include on this list seemed like a fool’s errand.

But then, there’s Canon City.

Best Places lists Canon City’s median home value at $145,000, but they routinely post lower numbers than Zillow (which is why it’s rounded up to $150,000 in the bulleted list above). According to Trulia, the median sales price of homes in Canon City is $162,500–not bad compared to the median home value. However, while Zillow doesn’t list very many numbers for Canon city, they do show a median value of $224,854 for homes that are currently listed for sale. While that stings compared to most of the other choices on this list, compare that number to the median list prices for nearby Colorado Springs and Salida: $315,000 and $449,450, respectively.

Canon City may be one of the only semi-affordable towns left in Colorado, but what’s the riding like? In a word: excellent.

Canon City has been building trails rapidly over the past few years and at last count, they now boast 139 miles of singletrack within 25 miles of downtown–and they aren’t done yet. New trail systems that have put Canon City on the map include Oil Well Flats, the South Canon Trails which are rideable from downtown, and the Royal Gorge Trails, where the trail mileage is set to expand rapidly in the near future.

While the trails around Canon City are set in a desert landscape, the town is still within easy day-ride distance of the high mountain singletrack that Colorado is famous for.