On February 2, 2023, the Bureau of Land Management filed its decision on changes to the Calf Creek Recreation Area in Boulder. Recommended improvements would be focused on the Lower Calf Creek Falls Trail and the campsites and parking lot near it.
Changes would include:
- Adding 70 new parking stalls as well as more designated parking and a wider access road.
- Relocating the Lower Falls Trailhead with a route around the campsite.
- Adding more vault toilets and removing the septic system.
- Moving all day-use amenities to one area, including the picnic area and shade shelters.
- Replacing infrastructure such as retaining walls, shade shelters, creek crossing structures, fee stations and restrooms. New infrastructure would also include a small amphitheater, a nature trail and pedestrian pathways.
- Reconfiguring and modernizing campsites, including building additional campsites and relocating the host site.
- Adding more small fixtures such as on-site trash collection, picnic tables, tent pads, fire rings and signs.
- Installing a fiber line for a future emergency phone and Wi-Fi communication.
Construction would likely begin at the end of the year and continue throughout 2024. The entire site, including the Lower Falls Trail, would be closed for “several weeks,” once it began.
History and Rationale for the Changes
Some of Calf Creek’s infrastructure, including the group picnic area, Lower Falls Trail and road access bridge, was constructed in the 1960s.
“Much of this infrastructure is either old, failing, unsafe, not universally accessible, insufficient to meet current and increasing visitation pressure and/or contributing to resource degradation,” bureau officials wrote in an environmental assessment published February 2.
BLM officials hoped that this project would provide more public access and amenities to visitors. Particularly it should keep people from parking along Scenic Byway 12.
Locals, however, have expressed reservations about the improvements, including worries that the area does not have the carrying capacity to hold the extra people who come with the 70 parking spaces.
In addition, some do not believe in the rationale behind destroying a historic group picnic area, put in place through a lot of thought and effort in the 1960s.
The decision can still be appealed until the end of the business day on March 4. Instructions for filing an appeal on the Calf Creek changes can be found here.
– The Byway
Feature image caption: Lower Calf Creek Falls. Courtesy Bureau of Land Management/ksl.