Lake Pueblo hosted 3.4 million last year. Jeffco Open Space estimated 7 million users in 2021. That’s right. 7 million. But efforts to control crowds raise questions of equity and access.
If anybody could work the system and get access to wildly popular open space this summer, you’d think Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commissioner Taishya Adams would have a good shot.
But there she is, just like everyone else, penciling early March on her planner as the day she can first swing sharp elbows online to get summer group backpacking reservations at Rocky Mountain National Park, not far from her home in Boulder.
“I’ve had it marked in my calendar for six months,” Adams told her fellow commissioners last week. She endorsed a new timed entry proposal for Eldorado Canyon State Park, where overflowing parking lots on weekends back up onto lawns in the little town of Eldorado Springs.
But she added a warning message: Intergenerational families love the big picnic areas at Eldorado and other state parks. They come in more than one car. Managing crowds by managing cars should not shut out diverse uses of state open space.
“I would hate to see that become a barrier,” Adams said.
Everyone agrees Colorado’s open spaces are growing alarmingly crowded on popular days. The numbers are startling.
Visitation at close-in Front Range state parks has doubled or nearly tripled. Sprawling Lake Pueblo had to turn away cars for the first time in 2020, the year it passed 3 million visitors. Jefferson County Open Space does not have gated entry for counting, but believes visitation to its 28 foothills gems passed 7 million last year.
Staunton State Park near Conifer rocketed from 89,000 in 2015 to 277,000 in 2020. Barr Lake in Brighton, a hit with birders and flatland bikers, went from 119,000 in 2015 to 258,000 in 2020, before settling back a bit with indoor pandemic restrictions easing in 2021. Open space officials expect use to keep climbing rapidly, if not quite as steeply as in the first year of the pandemic.
A Center for Western Priorities study of reservable camping spaces at federal and local public lands showed more than 95% of sites were taken at peak periods, with an overall 39% increase in summer camping at public spaces.
And the state parks commission may have just opened the gates on a new flood — the annual Keep Colorado Wild state parks pass will be only $29 in 2023, tacked on to annual car registration with an option to decline it, less than half the current $80 fee for one car.
Open space fans and park managers worry that new layers of control and costs will widen the already large gap between tourists and outdoors enthusiasts with time and income, and those on tight budgets and less access to technology.
Fees are adding up at every level, Eldorado Canyon hiker Jeff Paquette said.
“So now you have the annual pass for your state, the annual pass for your county, and before you know it, it’s going to be for all open space,” he said.
The Sierra Club is among those fighting for more open space and recreation opportunities closer to cities, Ostfeld said. By Sierra Club’s definition of “nearby,” 100 million Americans lack easy access to open space.
“We must be very careful to ensure that the actions of public land managers don’t perpetuate the status quo, with many communities already feeling unwelcome or unsafe in some of our national and more remote parks and public lands,” Ostfeld said.
Being mindful of everyone’s time and resources is key to designing open space access, Weiss said.
“One thing we’ve learned from all of this is that any sort of time system where a clock turns over and everyone is mashing a button to try to get in, that is not fair and equitable,” he said. Some space needs to be reserved for lottery or last-minute access for those whose lives can’t revolve around one reservation window.
Colorado leaders say they are aware of all these pitfalls, and will keep working to avoid them. The new $29 state parks pass linked to motor vehicle registration will bring in money to add new parks, experiment with reservations, expand shuttle systems and more, DNR’s Gibbs said.
He said he still prefers to look at access as a good problem to have.
“In the long run,” Gibbs said, “we want people to get outdoors. I mean, this is Colorado.”
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