Braden and the rest of the SuperATV crew left at 4:30 AM. Leatherwood Off-Road Park is about four and a half hours away from SuperATV HQ, but they finished the trip in closer to five with an Xpedition, RZR XP, and RZR Turbo S 4 in tow—all three machines fully decked out to take on the roughest trails they can find.
What they found after offloading their machines and meeting up with Leatherwood owner Terry Roberts and local UTV rental guru Jacob Rhodes was nice, smooth trails that they were used to.
“One thing that you don’t see at a lot of parks is how well the trails are groomed.” The main trails, the easy-rated trails 203 and 101 that traverse the north and south sections of the park and connect to many other trails, were in excellent condition. Almost no ruts or washouts anywhere.
Leatherwood Off-Road Park is a relatively new park in eastern Kentucky and butting up against the foothills of the Appalachians. It opened in 2023, and owner Terry Roberts hopes it can help revitalize the former coal company town and its surrounding communities. And they’ve hit their biggest milestone yet on the weekend we visited.
Leatherwood Off-Road Park sits on 50,000 acres in Perry County, near Hazard.
“We’ve got about 280 miles of trails now,” Terry told us during one of our rides with them. “Now” being the key word. They’re still cutting new trails almost continuously.
From the easy main trail to double black and red trails, there’s plenty of variety. During the rides, the SuperATV crew climbed up the rocky Bleepin’ Jeep trail, then made their way to Rattler Ridge, a narrow, off-camber rock crawl that requires precise positioning and throttle control to avoid rolling over. Upgraded suspension is practically required. From Rattler Ridge, they found an unmarked connector trail, either too new for the maps or one of so many freshly cut trails that it hasn’t been logged yet, that led them back to the main thoroughfare of trail 101.
But they didn’t need top-of-the-line SuperATV rigs to enjoy themselves. “You can come to this place on these main trails with a stock unit and have a good time,” Braden noted during a trailside lunch break. “This place is beautiful, leaves are changing, we’re having a great day.”
Rentals Built for Black Diamonds
If you want to test your mettle on more challenging trails, but you don’t have the machine for it, then Jacob Rhodes is your man. He’s the owner of Leatherwood Off Rhodes Rentals, where you can rent side-by-sides complete with SuperATV long-travel kits and guided tours of the park.
There aren’t a lot of places that let you rent UTVs with significant suspension upgrades like that. “You can come out here,” Jacob explained to us, “test the long travel kits out, and see what they feel like before you even put one on your machine.”
If you don’t know much about the area, you might not be surprised to see a ride park out in the wilderness of eastern Kentucky. But it’s more than just a park for the local community.
Leatherwood started as a Blue Diamond coal company town in 1944. It was rich with housing, stores, a theater, and other services all to support a growing workforce of miners.
As mining operations in the area slowed, so did the town.
Terry was a third-generation coal miner in Leatherwood, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. He watched the town he grew up in shrink as people left to find work elsewhere.
Terry wanted to help bring people and business back to his home, so he and his son opened Leatherwood Off-Road Park in April 2023. With 50,000 acres built on former coal mining land covering parts of Perry, Leslie, Letcher, and Harlan counties, Leatherwood claims the title of the largest off-road park in Kentucky. The effects of having such a prominent park are already being felt in the area a little over 3 years later.
Local businesses are benefiting from off-road-recreation-driven tourism to the point that redevelopment is cropping up. One of the most prominent examples is the ongoing Leatherwood Wildcat Coal Lodge Project designed to accommodate more visitors in the area driven largely by Leatherwood Off-Road Park.
Perhaps the biggest signal of all that Terry’s on the right track to bring people back is Ultra4 coming to the park.
Back in June of this year, Ultra4 Racing and Hammerking Productions announced that they’d be holding their series finale at the all-new Thunderdome near Leatherwood Off-Road Park. Terry and his team built the Thunderdome specifically to accommodate the Ultra4 Racing series. If you’re unfamiliar with Ultra4, it’s the organization that puts on King of the Hammers in Southern California too.
The Thunderdome is a one-mile short-course track complete with a monstrous boulder section that challenges even the most robust competitor builds. It’s built in a natural valley that gives audience members the chance to get close to the action, or to get a bird’s-eye view from the surrounding hillsides.
The goal is to go fast, which is at odds with the rock sections that normally demand careful routing and a steady brake foot. But with these top-tier custom race machines, the gas pedal stays on the floor as they rip over the boulders, shredding tires, skid plates, and suspension all the way through. Ultra4 Racing is just as much a race to survive as it is a race to finish first.
With Leatherwood Off-Road Park hosting the series finale, there’s now another reason for folks to come to Perry County, Hazard, Slemp, and Leatherwood.
In Hazard, Kentucky, the main street was filled with UTVs in town for the race. And this is just the first event in a multi-year partnership between Ultra4 Racing/Hammerking Productions and Leatherwood Off-Road Park.
People are coming back to Leatherwood. And the future is bright for Leatherwood Off-Road Park. With the premier off-road racing series coming back to the Thunderdome for the foreseeable future, new trails being cut through the park all the time, and the title of being the biggest off-road park in Kentucky, Terry Roberts’ dream of revitalizing his home in the mountains is right on track.
