Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative · Article 23 of 24
The second half of the project list is how the plan keeps its conservation promise. Several of the highest-ranked items after the trails are water and forest projects. Others are institutions: a summit, a ranger program, a messaging plan, gatherings with people who own private land.
Rivers and the forest
Minnequa Dam, 80 years old and 0.4 miles upstream of Florence’s Pathfinder Park, blocks floating anglers, boaters, and aquatic species between the upper Arkansas and Pueblo Reservoir. The project would engineer a replacement that restores passage and still delivers water to agricultural, city, and industrial users. The COS Creek Plan is a vision for investment and stewardship on the Fountain Creek watershed, focused on Monument and Fountain creek segments beside downtown Colorado Springs. The watershed protection strategy is the three-county version: pollutants, drought, habitat, land use, and community engagement, aimed at long-term quality and supply. Forest health and wildfire mitigation is framed as coordination — sharing resources, aligning priorities, and region-wide fuels treatment — rather than a single prescribed burn. The John Griffin riparian project would reconnect the park’s channels to the Arkansas in Cañon City. The plan notes $50 million already secured for water storage, wildfire protection, and recreation, and says more partners are needed.
Land, data, and wildlife
The regional land-conservation plan would integrate public-land uses, including REPI, open space, and viewshed protection. A visitor-use study would read cell-phone data across the three counties to see where people actually go. The wildlife rehabilitation and education center is proposed as both a care facility and a public amenity as visitation rises. The Black Hills property plan would transfer the historic W.N. Clark power plant site in Cañon City from Black Hills to the city, a recommendation already sitting in the 2017 Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan, with room for camping, boating access, trailheads, and a park.
The unglamorous regional projects
An OHV training facility would teach users and enforcers, on the argument that skill is resource protection. An annual land-manager summit would keep the OPPI table alive. A regional recreation ranger program would test volunteer and non-armed ranger support alongside official rangers. A regional education and messaging plan would coordinate what agencies already say. E-bike policy, private-landowner gatherings, an access-through-transportation initiative, and a cell-service feasibility study close the list. They are on it because listening-session comments and manager feedback named them as regional, not because they photograph well.
Source: Outdoor Pikes Peak Initiative Vision Plan 2025, prepared through the Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance as the local Colorado Outdoor Regional Partnership, with support from Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Great Outdoors Colorado. Project team: PPORA, Trails and Open Space Coalition, N.E.S. Inc., Bachman PR, and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Geography Department. The plan was written across a four-year process and released in 2025; some statistics reflect a point in time before publication. Appendix G, pages 476–478; priority order, page 104.
