AURORA —Aurora is producing bigger roads, more houses and longer trails in a feverish attempt to keep pace with the city’s exponential growth. But all of that metropolitan development has left some of the city’s more rural residents — and their horses — feeling forgotten.
“This neighborhood is about the last of the places where you can have a horse property,” said Laurel LaFramboise, a Stapleton resident who, up until recently, drove her horse, Leeloo, along the High Line Canal Trail with a passenger cart. “You can see the development happening where they have a 2-acre property like this and they put 16 houses on it. ”
LaFramboise is a recent transplant to the area. She boards Leeloo — a 14-year-old Shetland, Welsh and Haflinger pony mix — at Kenlyn Arabian Stables in the northeast portion of the city. But it’s been more than a month since Leeloo has explored the regional trails.
Last month, while riding in the small cart pulled by Leeloo near the Aurora Community College on the High Line Canal Trail, LaFramboise was told by city officials that buggies aren’t allowed on regional trails reserved for bikers, pedestrians and horseback riders.
The incident has the city’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space Division looking into possible allowances, but LaFramboise said the restriction brings up a larger trend of agricultural recreation being pushed to the side by a growing city.
“They shouldn’t be forcing out the more rural areas for urban development,” she said. “When I go along these paths, you can see places where there are still patches of agricultural (elements). There’s a goat farm along High Line Canal.”
Laura Baker is one of the owners of Aurora Stables, the city’s oldest indoor stable that has spent more than 60 years in the center of the city at 10850 E. Exposition Ave.
“We’re right next to Expo Park,” Baker said. “It used to be that you could just go across on the dirt trails that used to be there and roam around, and now you have to use the sidewalk or the grass just to get along the canal. Then you can go along the canal for a little bit and then you have to turn off at Mississippi. … I haven’t seen a horse on there for probably seven years.”
Baker said that 45 years ago, the Aurora Stables had a delivery stable and a sleigh.
“I’d say it’s been about 25 years since we were able to do deliveries,” she said. “We used to ride up to Alameda and all over Smith Road, but it’s utterly impossible now to do that,” Baker said. “So, we’ve adjusted our business into more of like a boarding stable. It’s not really a place where people just come and ride anymore.”
Baker said she doesn’t expect the city of 350,000 to return to the days of horse and buggy travel, but she said little things like the decreasing number of dirt paths is making horse recreation a challenge.
“Over the years, there were less and less places to be with a horse. You couldn’t have them in the parks anymore and then they started building pedestrian bridges that horses could never go on to link up the trails and parks,” Baker said.
Brian Green, the city’s open space and natural resources superintendent, said the city is creating more soft surface paths through ongoing projects like the Triple Creek Trail.
“We try to accommodate horseback users where we can, and we’re actually developing a new trail that will move from the area where Kenlyn Stables is and continue on all the way out to potentially the Aurora Reservoir,” Green said. “It will be horseback user friendly. Our division is working tirelessly to acquire more open space to create more opportunity for people to use public land how they want.”
But when you’re used to having it all in terms of open riding space, little concessions don’t add up fast enough, for some.
“They’re now putting cement paths all through the city,” said Linda Fisher, who runs Kenlyn Stables at 1000 Salida St.
Fisher said that she hopes the Triple Creek Trail, which is being formed on the eastern edge of her business, will have a little dirt space for her riders to continue to use.
“In the past, those old dirt trails haven’t been used by many people, and now the city is trying to make it a huge, multi-use thing,” Fisher said. “We’ve been the only ones out there for the past 35 years using it, but now we’re just hoping that they leave a dirt surface on the side so that we can still ride along there.”
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com or @Mmitchelldp
