Brighton – Creeping development and hostile neighbors have driven many Front Range shooting ranges out of business or to backcountry sanctuaries where shooters can squeeze off a few rounds in peace.
But even in rural enclaves such as Watkins, where the Golden Gun Club relocated nearly 10 years go, houses loom on the horizon and threaten to displace another shooting refuge near the metro area, said club president O.W. Ervin.
“My God, developers will build to the Kansas line if you let them, so I’m sure they’ll get us one day,” Ervin said.
Riding to the rescue like some Old West heroes are the Adams County commissioners. They want to build a “world-class” shooting range on the county’s rolling plains. There are also plans to develop, with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, an education center where gun safety and local wildlife will be studied.
People will be able to hone skills over the lunch hour or after work, said Scott Hoover, the agency’s northeast regional manager.
Commissioners say they are responding to the needs of metro-area gun owners who have few convenient spots to shoot rifles, shotguns and pistols.
“The demand has grown around us,” said commissioner W.R. “Skip” Fischer. At the same time, “places people went to in the past have been squeezed out by development.”
The move by Adams County will get plenty of support from the 3,000-member Colorado State Shooting Association.
“We will help them any way we can,” said association president Anthony Fabian.
Gun-range owners either can’t resist offers from suburban developers and sell out or they move to avoid showdowns with nearby homeowners over noise and safety complaints, Fabian said.
Also, the U.S. Forest Service is closing shooting ranges on Forest Service land, generating a bigger bottleneck of recreational shooters on the Front Range, Fabian said.
“The demand for shooting ranges is growing but the sites are getting more scarce by the day,” he said.
While dozens of smaller public and private ranges operated along the Front Range in the 1960s and 1970s, only two public ranges survive today, according to the association.
The largest is the 120-acre Cherry Creek State Park Family Shooting Center. Pawnee Sportsmens Center is smaller and located in northern Weld County.
“If it wasn’t for Cherry Creek, a lot of people in the metro area would be out of luck,” said Fabian, who says the metro area is home to at least 1 million gun owners.
About 30,000 people a year use the Cherry Creek site for pistol, rifle and trap practice. Most are men, but a growing number are women, said shooting center manager Doug Hamilton.
“More and more people are coming out,” Hamilton said. “They are shooting as a good way to spend a weekend with the family.”
Many private ranges, where the annual membership fee is $150, have waiting lists of a year or more, said Fabian.
The Division of Wildlife, which would manage the Adams County site, wants at least 320 acres for the range, said Hoover.
A combination of Great Outdoors Colorado grants with other public and private funding will likely be used to pay the roughly $3 million development costs.
“Our hope,” Hoover said, “is to turn it into a world-class shooting range that everyone can be proud of.”
Staff writer Monte Whaley can be reached at 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com.
