Castle Rock and Parker this week became the first communities in Colorado to forbid the use of , enacting temporary bans on the fast-emerging segment of a retail world increasingly driven by speed and convenience.
The Parker Town Council unanimously passed an emergency ordinance Monday that places a nine-month moratorium on the town accepting applications from retailers to establish drone dispatch and delivery facilities.
About 24 hours later, the Castle Rock Town Council passed a similar ban. Castle Rock’s timeout will last six months.
Both towns recently received inquiries from Walmart and Wing about launching a drone operation to make deliveries for the retail behemoth, be it printer cartridges, a banana or a bottle of cold medicine. Wing, which is owned by the Google parent company Alphabet, , including Houston, Dallas and Atlanta.
Drone delivery has yet to take off in Colorado, though it is .
“The town council thinks this is going to happen in the future and we don’t want to be the test case for it,” Castle Rock Mayor Jason Gray said Tuesday. “A lot of people are asking how loud they are, how often they will fly and at what distance around town.”
A glimpse at answers to some of those questions came during Parker’s Town Council meeting Monday night. Town planner Elizabeth Steward told the council that the drones proposed for the town would fly at heights between 150 feet and 400 feet, though they could drop down and hover around 40 feet above the ground when delivering or retrieving items.
The loudest a drone would get when delivering merchandise, she said, would be 62.6 decibels, which sound experts say is .
Councilwoman Brandi Wilks said she worries about how delivery drones might impact wildlife and whether they will conflict with drones the Parker Police Department regularly flies.
Councilman Todd Hendreks said a pause was needed as the town tried to wrap its head around the technology and devise the most appropriate ways to deploy it. The move by both Douglas County towns this week echoed the go-slow approach some Colorado communities have taken recently with other emerging technologies, such as the development of artificial intelligence-driven data centers.
“With emerging technology, since we have really nothing to address this, I think it’s important to give (town) staff time to review and come back to us with whatever they find,” Hendreks said.
Parker plans to hire a consultant to come up with rules for managing delivery drones in town.
Ultimately, though, cities and towns in Colorado are limited in what they can control when it comes to drones. That’s because the Federal Aviation Administration has jurisdiction over airspace, aircraft operations, flight paths, altitude and in-flight noise, according to .
A municipality’s regulatory authority is “generally limited to the land use and site-related aspects of the operation, including where launch and landing infrastructure may be located,” and how the site is designed, the memo says.
Delivery drones in Castle Rock would have to compete with the town’s drones-as-first-responder program, which it launched through its police department last summer.
“The FAA will have ultimate control — we’re hoping we have enough control that we can guide the process as well,” said Gray, Castle Rock’s mayor.
According to , the drone delivery business is poised for robust growth as consumers who shop by smartphone — and from their couches — become hungrier for faster delivery times. The forecasting firm projects that the global industry will grow from just over $5 billion this year to nearly $21 billion in 2034.
The firm said North America “dominated the drone package delivery market with a market share of 35.47% in 2025.”
Gray said it’s one thing when it’s just Walmart flying merchandise to people’s front steps in Castle Rock. But if drones prove popular with consumers, others are sure to get in on the action.
“If we have 18 different retailers doing delivery by drone, I don’t know what that’s going to look like,” he said. “If drones were flying by your house 15 to 25 times a day, my citizens might not like it.”
In May, Walmart , boasting that it is operating the service across 66 stores in four states. Its fastest delivery time so far is 4 minutes and 44 seconds, though the average delivery time for an order is 23 minutes.
Parker Councilwoman Anne Barrington conceded that while the latest wave in shopping convenience is fraught with uncertainty, she has no doubt that it’s coming — and Parker better be ready.
“We’re not saying no — we’re just saying no today,” she said.
