Camp Kotami, a former Camp Fire retreat, is for sale for the first time in nearly 40 years. But finding the right buyer for the 378-acre parcel in Jefferson County may take some time. The asking price is $6.5 million.
“It is one of the largest parcels I have had in a few years,” said Nick Melzer, a managing broker with Denver Foothills Properties, an Evergreen-based affiliate of Compass Real Estate. “There are a couple of other listings that are larger, but they have less usable land.”
The property features meadows, slick rock formations, and a year-round creek, as well as a bunkhouse once associated with the camp. Compared to other large land parcels available in the foothills, the land is highly accessible and not on steep terrain.
Camp Fire Girls, which spun off from the Boy Scouts of America in 1910, purchased the land in the 1960s and for two decades used it as a campground. In 1975, the group rebranded as Camp Fire Boys and Girls.
Denver Water purchased the land, which is near the North Fork of the South Platte River, in the late 1980s, thinking it would become part of the inundation area for its proposed Two Forks Reservoir. But the water storage project .
The utility shifted its focus to expanding Gross Reservoir outside of Boulder and focused on conservation efforts. It has since downsized plans for Two Forks, which resulted in a “surplus” designation for the former campground.
Melzer said the buildings need work, but they could be restored, and the area returned to its prior use as a campground. But church and nonprofit ownership of retreats has been on a steep decline.
A developer, with county approvals, could potentially subdivide the land into 10 lots of 35 acres each, Melzer said. The area has road access and electricity, but it lacks water and sewage connections, which makes a higher-density use less feasible. New wells and septic systems would need to be installed.
The land is outside of Foxton, which is about 45 minutes from central Denver.
The most likely buyer would use the land as a private retreat or a family compound, he said. Several interested parties have come to look at the land since it was listed on Oct. 1, but the fit hasn’t been quite right, Melzer said.
Although the price tag is one of the highest for a mountain parcel near metro Denver, it is hardly the most expensive in the state.
That designation belongs to the former St. Benedict’s Monastery, which was built in 1956 in Old Snowmass. The last of the Trappist Monks left in 2023, and the 3,739 acres of prime mountain land were after an earlier offer fell apart.
There are 352 parcels of raw land or farms listed for $3 million or more in Colorado,
Due to a reporting error, the original version of the story misspelled the name of Camp Kotami.
