Golden – The last unprotected mile of the historic Beaver Brook Trail in Clear Creek Canyon has been acquired through a 360-acre conservation easement, meaning a vast majority of the scenic canyon’s lower reaches will never be developed.
The land is downhill from Mount Vernon Country Club and across Clear Creek from Tunnel 3 on U.S. 6.
The recent $1.68 million transaction brings the dream of creating a 3-mile-wide by 8-mile-long open space park centered on Clear Creek a major step closer to reality.
In recent years, more than 10,000 acres in Clear Creek Canyon have been preserved through conservation easements with private and public landowners and purchases by Jefferson County Open Space.
“This one has been in the works for over 20 years,” said Rock Pring, president of the Clear Creek Land Conservancy. “This canyon is really unique among canyons along the Front Range since it is the deepest and the only one not developed from the bottom up.”
Ralph Schell, director of Jefferson County Open Space, said the acquisition of the 320-acre timbered parcel and 40-acre former hayfield “fits with what we’ve been doing. It’s cool.”
A Clear Creek park management plan has been developed, including possible vehicle turnouts along U.S. 6 and trail improvements.
It probably will take years and millions of dollars before it is implemented.
The Clear Creek Land Conservancy brokered the Oct. 31 deal between longtime foothills landowner and cattle rancher Norm Ralston and the nonprofit Northwoodside Foundation.
Ralston donated the conservation easement – a deed that gives up all future rights to develop the property – to the conservancy. The foundation owns the land.
Northwoodside was formed 38 years ago by Carla Coleman, a clinical psychologist who arrived in Colorado by covered wagon near the turn of the 20th century.
She lived on Lookout Mountain most of her life and began buying property in Clear Creek Canyon.
“She had a vision of seeing a wilderness park extend from Denver’s Stapleton mountain park to Mount Zion,” said Bob Weimer, Northwoodside president. “This helps to fulfill her vision.”
After Coleman died in 1992 and her husband, Pat, died in 1999, their estate was left to the Northwoodside Foundation.
Weimer said the foundation has followed Coleman’s mission by preserving private lands through conservation easements on more than 1,000 acres in the foothills.
The acquired property was considered the most vulnerable to development in Clear Creek Canyon.
Now, Pring said, the 8-mile-long Beaver Brook Trail, which was built in the early 1900s, is protected from the Lariat Loop on Lookout Mountain to Chief Hosa.
The remaining “hole in the doughnut” that Pring said would complete the preservation of the canyon is 320 acres of land owned by the Mount Vernon Country Club Metropolitan District, which has indicated a willingness to consider a conservation easement.
“Our feeling is the land really should be pretty much the way it is,” Weimer said.
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
