Tucson Country Club Sits on the Loop. This Year, the Loop Finally Works End to End.

Tucson Country Club backs directly onto the Chuck Huckelberry Loop. The neighborhood is bordered by the Pantano Wash and Tanque Verde Creek, and both feed straight into the 140-mile paved path system that Pima County maintains across Tucson, Oro Valley, Marana, and South Tucson. That access has been there since the club's early years. What changed this year has nothing to do with that stretch of path and everything to do with a stretch you'd only reach after a long ride: the far northwest side, where the Loop used to just stop.

The Sunset Links Bridge opened to drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians in May 2026, closing a gap Pima County's own transportation director had already conceded was overdue. There had never been a real connection between River Road and Interstate 10, and that was the whole point of the project. The bridge cost $171 million, took nearly three years to build, and spans the Rillito River and the Union Pacific rail line while also linking River Road to I-10 and Silverbell Road. Built into the project is a dedicated underpass connection to the Loop itself, so cyclists and walkers no longer have to cross traffic at grade to get from one side to the other. One rider told KVOA what the fix actually feels like day to day: "I don't like crossing roads, and this is much safer because it goes under the road."

Why a bridge on the far side of town matters here

The honest answer is that it doesn't change your ride out of Tucson Country Club tomorrow morning. Your entry point onto the Loop is still the same stretch along the Pantano Wash and Tanque Verde Creek it's always been. What the bridge changes is what's possible once you're on the system. Before this spring, a rider working the western half of the Loop hit a dead stop at River Road and had to backtrack or dodge onto surface streets to reach I-10 and points beyond. That's no longer true. The 140-mile network Pima County maintains is now a connected system in a way it wasn't six months ago, and Tucson Country Club's own segment of it feeds into all of it.

What was closed this summer, and what's still closed this week

None of this arrived without disruption, and Pima County ran a rolling set of maintenance closures through the summer that are worth knowing about if you haven't been out on the Loop in a while. A stretch between Swan and Craycroft, closer to the neighborhood's own side of town, had crack sealing through late June. Farther west, the south bank between La Cholla and La Cañada got a full seal coat starting in early June, and the north lane passing directly under the new Sunset Links Bridge closed for three weeks in June and July while crews installed artwork on the north side wall.

As of this week, one closure is still active: an intermittent stretch northwest of Grant and I-10 that Pima County says runs through August 28, with flaggers directing traffic and a detour pushing riders to the east bank between Sunset and El Camino del Cerro in the meantime. That's the last piece of this summer's work still on the board. Pima County posts updates to its Loop notices page as crews move through sections, worth a quick check before a longer ride.

The club's own upgrades landed on the same timeline

While the county was rebuilding the west side of the system, the club was making its own changes. Recent visitor reviews describe a recently renovated clubhouse and a new pickleball facility that members are calling the best in town, sitting alongside the existing 18-hole championship course. That course carries real history: father-and-son architects William F. Bell and William P. Bell designed the original 1947 layout, and Jack Snyder handled a significant update in 1977. The club itself traces back to 1946, when a group of Tucsonans bought the original ranch land and built what became the city's first true country-club subdivision. Prominent Tucson families have lived here across generations since, some of them second and third-generation residents of the same 580 acres.

A reason to ride farther than usual

If you want an excuse to test how much farther the Loop reaches now, the Pima County El Tour Loop de Loop is set for Saturday, September 26, 2026, starting at Rillito Park Race Track, which sits on the connected path system a manageable ride from Tucson Country Club's own entry point. Riders can join anywhere along the route rather than committing to the full 140 miles, and organizers suggest riding clockwise if you're doing a longer stretch. Most participants ride 10 to 20 miles out and back from Rillito Park, with an after-party featuring live music starting around 10 a.m. It's a low-stakes way to see the newly connected system for yourself, and it lands a month after this summer's closures clear out. The larger El Tour de Tucson event follows on November 21 if the shorter ride leaves you wanting more.

If your ride takes you as far as the Rillito River Park segment of the Loop, riders there have long pointed to Cafe Luce and Ren Coffee as the places to stop, close enough to the path to roll up without changing out of riding gear. Neither is new this year, but they're the kind of detail that only shows up once you've actually ridden the route rather than looked it up.

What this adds up to

Tucson Country Club's connection to the Loop has never been the story. The neighborhood has always had it, tucked along the Pantano Wash and Tanque Verde Creek since the club's earliest years. What changed in 2026 is what that connection leads to. A gap that sat unfixed for decades on the far side of the system closed this spring. The maintenance that came with it is almost finished, with one closure clearing by the end of this week. The club's own courts and clubhouse got their own refresh on a parallel timeline. And there's a ride on the calendar in five weeks that gives you a real reason to find out how far you can now go without hitting a dead end.

If you're comparing Tucson Country Club to other established Tucson neighborhoods and want a straight read on what daily life actually looks like here, Gray St. Onge can walk you through it.