The rumors are true: the city of Cheyenne will start the process of building a trailhead and trails just north of the Colorado-Wyoming border. The first phase will include a trailhead off Harriman Road and six miles of trails on the property known as Belvoir Ranch. Thanks in part to a $486,000 grant from the Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation, construction will begin in May, and the trailhead and trails will be open to the public by 2025. If all goes according to plan, roughly 20 miles will be built, and those trails will eventually connect to Red Mountain in Larimer County, Colorado.
One major obstacle in having those trails connect to Colorado is the need to go over or under the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. City officials are currently working with UPRR on a solution. According to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, which interviewed Mayor Patrick Collins and City Engineer Tom Cobb, the city has explored several potential avenues for access, specifically across the railroad tracks, from using underpasses or conveyances already in place to building new access points.
None, Collins said, have been approved by Union Pacific.
“They told us no. We asked many times, and they said no,” Collins said. “I can’t tell you how disappointing that is. We have funding, we have everything ready to go, but we cannot get them to agree to let us go from one side of the tracks to the other, which is our property.”
The plan today, according to Cobb, is to build an approximately $4.5 million bridge over the tracks.
“Right now, we’re working on a plan, including concept designs that we presented to the Union Pacific Railroad, and we’ve found a location for a bridge over the tracks,” Cobb said. “We haven’t worked through that with the railroad, but they have seen the option of the bridge.”
Once this is complete, you will, in theory, be able to ride from Fort Collins to Cheyenne via a combination of pavement, gravel, and singletrack. This would be about a 60-mile ride, heavily dependent on how the trails are routed.
Full press release, video, and other resources are below.
The following information can also be found here.
Press Release:
CHEYENNE – The City of Cheyenne has received a $486,736 grant from the Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation to go toward construction of a trailhead and initial trails at the Belvoir Ranch.
Combined with a match of $121,684 from the City’s Belvoir Ranch Recreation Special Fund, the money will allow the City to begin building recreational trails on the property later this year.
“This grant will help us fulfill our goal of ‘boots and bikes on the ground’ at the Belvoir,” Mayor Patrick Collins said. “This is going to be such an amazing amenity for our community and we appreciate the funding from the Office of Outdoor Recreation to make this project happen.”
The new trailhead will be located about three miles south of Interstate 80 off Harriman Road. It will include a restroom, ADA-compliant parking, an informational kiosk, a covered picnic area, and access road improvements.
Barring unforeseen delays, construction is planned to begin in late spring 2024 and the developed area of the ranch is expected to be open to the public in 2025. In addition to the trailhead, this first phase of work will include 6.1 miles of non-motorized trail.
Future phases will include additional recreational trails, including connections to Red Mountain Open Space in Colorado. The City is also analyzing the possibility of building a bridge over the Union Pacific Railroad line that runs east-west through the Belvoir Ranch, which would further increase access.
The City purchased the Belvoir Ranch in 2003 with the intent of a number of uses, including water, a potential landfill site, energy development, and recreation. Two years later, the City bought the adjacent Big Hole property from The Nature Conservancy, which holds a conservation easement on that land. The two properties together total about 18,800 acres.
Since the purchase, the City has retained working ranch operations and leased the property for wind power operations. In 2008, the City adopted the Belvoir Ranch Master Plan to guide future development of the property.
The Belvoir Ranch’s eastern end is about 8 miles west of downtown Cheyenne and the property continues to Harriman Road at its western end. It is generally between the Union Pacific Railroad to the south and I-80 and Otto Road to the north. Some sections of the ranch lie south of the UPRR, as does the majority of the Big Hole property, which borders Colorado.
Recreational development has not yet been built on the Belvoir Ranch or Big Hole except for a trail section on the Big Hole that connects to the trail system at Red Mountain Open Space, which is operated by Larimer County, Colorado.
To learn more about the Belvoir Ranch, visit www.cheyennecity.org/Belvoir.
Belvoir Ranch Video Tour:
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