Editor’s note: With the final mile of the Poudre River Trail expected to be completed in the coming months, this story looks back on the decades-long effort to connect Northern Colorado along the river — and the people whose persistence made it possible.
Growing up in Greeley, Fred Otis thought of the Poudre River the way he thought of Disneyland, as this faraway, magical place miles from home.
He knew it existed in the canyon far north in Fort Collins, but he couldn’t comprehend the fact that it stretched all the way through Greeley. He caught glimpses of it from the nosebleed seats in Island Grove Arena during the Greeley Stampede. He caught frogs at the park there, a probable result of the river that flowed nearby, but even then, it seemed like more of an afterthought.
“You knew it was in the canyon,” Otis said, “but you had no idea what it looked like.”
Otis graduated from College High School in 1963, obtained a law degree, and after a stint as an FBI agent in the early 1970s, opened a real estate law practice. And yet, even by the late 80s, he’d never really seen much of the Poudre. There was no access to it, as far as he could tell: Private land surrounded it.
It always made him kind of sad. Otis loved to ride bikes, and he ran several marathons. There wasn’t really a great place to do either, at least not for the long hours he preferred to ride or run the long miles training for those marathons demanded. A little scenery, he thought, would make those miles go by much faster.
Otis not only found a place to finally enjoy the river; he was a big part in making it possible for the tens of thousands of Northern Colorado residents who run, bike and walk the Poudre River Trail. His nonprofit board on Weld County’s side joined with Larimer County, Fort Collins and many other towns to build a 45-mile path from Bellvue to Greeley. Larimer and Weld will finally meet in the middle this spring, when the last mile will be built between Timnath and Windsor. That mile should be ready in early 2026, though there’s no end date yet.
There were many times in those decades of work that it didn’t seem possible to build a complete path that would wind all through Northern Colorado. But Otis always remained optimistic. At one point, he never thought he’d get to see the river at all, at least through Greeley.
Then in the early 1990s, over coffee with Becky Safarik, Greeley’s longtime director of community development, she mentioned that she wanted to get a group together that could, just maybe, build a trail alongside the river. Safarik loved to dream big, but this idea had some legs, as the Greeley City Council first talked about it in 1988. A trail would give him a scenic place to run. It would give him a chance to not only see the river but maybe even experience it. Suddenly, Otis was a kid again, dreaming of Disneyland.
“I actually begged to be a part of it,” Otis said.
He didn’t need to beg. As proof, when the committee held its first meeting, in 1995, they elected him as the chairperson, and he’d serve for more than 30 years.
That group became a nonprofit board made up of three members each from Greeley, Weld County and Windsor as well as an intergovernmental agreement with all three. At times, the work was difficult, as the fundraising and grant writing felt endless, and he had to use all his negotiating skills as a real estate attorney to get landowners to allow the trail across their land, sometimes by talking with the next generation decades later.
As they worked, Fort Collins, Larimer County and, eventually, nearby towns were busy building their own sections of the trail. They had the advantage of open-space sales taxes approved by their residents, meaning that their government, instead of a volunteer board, would fund, build, and even maintain the trail in its early years. There were also disadvantages to that, which is why Otis never really envied Larimer County, at least not too much.
Even as Otis and the board worked for decades to build a trail through Greeley, it never felt impossible. It felt more like a dream come true.
“I always felt enthused with the response,” Otis said. “It seemed like an idea whose time had come.”
The Poudre River Trail extends from Bellvue to Greeley. Courtesy Larimer County.
Given that it seems as if there are more trails than sidewalks in Fort Collins, it seems weird to consider that the the city didn’t begin developing trails until the 1960s. But Fort Collins didn’t build its first until 1965, along Spring Creek, which led to the development of Spring Park.
Trails, of course, go back centuries, as Native Americans used the Cherokee Trail decades before it was discovered (and also used) by explorers in the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s, when an influx of Oregon Trail travelers established the Overland Trail from Denver north through Larimer County as a corridor for burgeoning towns. LaPorte was named the headquarters of the Mountain Division of the Overland Trail State Route in 1862. A station was built right along the river, where the present N. Overland Trail now crosses it. The town now has a monument marking the site of the stop.
In the early 1970s, Fort Collins envisioned a 25-mile recreational trail loop system weaving through the city and connecting the Poudre, Spring Creek and the foothills. In 1978, the city built the first section of the Poudre Trail from College Avenue to Linden Street out of Lee Martinez Park. It would be how leaders from Weld and Larimer counties would build it until it was done — piece by piece as opportunities arose. At times, building the pieces felt random, but organizers from both counties had a general route in mind — along the Poudre, of course — and a goal, accompanied by endless optimism, that they would connect the sections over time, even if connecting Larimer to Weld wasn’t the idea right away.
“In the 1970s, the council began to realize the potential of these trails and how they could be for quality of life,” said Dave Kemp, senior trails planner for the City of Fort Collins. “It’s these early council members who really saw the vision, and since that point, each council has carried that community value going forward. The Poudre Trail is the gem of that.”
It was, ironically, not considered a gem when Fort Collins built its first official section in 1987 in LaPorte. Fort Collins saw it as a way to connect the two areas, like a handshake in asphalt, but LaPorte viewed it as an infringement by Fort Collins, essentially telling their neighbors to build their trail in their own dang city.
Undeterred by the initial response, Fort Collins began building portions of the east and west from its original nexus in Lee Martinez Park. In 1992, the Conservation Trust Fund was established by the state. Colorado distributed lottery funds to local governments for acquiring and maintaining parks, open space and recreational facilities. This and other local funding, including the open space sales tax approved by citizens, would pay for most of the Poudre Trail in Larimer County.
This was, of course, a stark contrast to Weld County, which paid for the trail through grants and funds raised by hand, and it allowed Fort Collins to build most of its portion of the trail by 1995. The city is proud of the trail, but there aren’t nearly as many records as those kept by Weld’s nonprofit, probably partly because the nonprofit wanted to show donors and grant givers its progress in the hopes of obtaining more money.
In fact, Fort Collins essentially built the trail twice. In the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Fort Collins replaced its asphalt trail with the studier concrete, an unforgiving surface for runners but one that lasts a long, long time. Everyone else mostly likely loved the change, including Kemp, as asphalt is known for bumps and potholes.
“I used to longboard back (in the mid-’90s),” Kemp said, “and you had to be on the lookout or else you’d get thrown.”
The Poudre River Trail was first conceived in the 1970s but will be complete in the spring of 2026. Courtesy City of Fort Collins.Before the Poudre River Trail was a given, it was an experiment
Greeley had its own first major milestone in 1994, when it not only broke ground on the project in June, on National Trails Day, but it completed its first section, at Island Grove, thanks to a Great Outdoors Colorado grant it received the year before. Windsor also received a grant to build a trail in Eastman Park, about as far west as you could go in Weld County. It was this section in Windsor that showed how much landowners would influence where the trail would be built and when. It’s also where Otis began to show his worth as the main negotiator.
Eastman Kodak Co. owned the land where the trail would pass through Eastman Park: The company had already donated the land for the park years ago, but it had concerns about droves of people using a trail in case there was a chemical accident. Otis found a state law that absolved the company from responsibility for public recreation purposes.
Those early days showed how donations, either monetary or in-kind, would help stretch the trail. Tom Selders, an owner of Big R Manufacturing who would eventually become Greeley’s mayor, oversaw construction. Mike Ketterling, owner of KBN Engineering, helped design the trail. Both, like Otis and other board members, did this free of charge. Both would also become key members: Selders later became the Poudre’s Trail Manager in Greeley, and Ketterling was one of the trail’s strongest advocates and would sometimes join Otis in negotiating with landowners.
Donations, however, came from parties other than the board. Noffsinger, Hoshiko and Farr families donated $50,000 toward the construction of a footbridge just west of Missile Silo Park; George Hall, owner of Hall-Irwin Construction, donated 80 acres; and Martin Lind and Steve Watson, owners of the Water Valley sand mining operation, donated three riverbank miles, plus $175,000 for construction.
That last donation benefited Water Valley as well, as the two were planning to build what would be a successful subdivision in Windsor. But upon reflection years later, Otis didn’t mind the tradeoffs, and he relied on many others to get easements from landowners. Many other developers would eventually donate land and access through easements because they recognized the trail as an amenity. Ed Orr, developer of the Poudre River Ranch, offered an easement for the trail so the city could build it by his neighborhood as a beautiful addition. Orr also offered the city the red barn if they moved it, giving the trail a trademark at 71st Avenue (the trailhead is called the Red Barn parking lot by many users). Lots of other tradeoffs were made all along the route: Easements were offered in exchange for the construction of a fence, covenants about horses and even access of livestock to the river.
“Some (like Hall) were just generous, but Martin Lind wanted the trail to go through his land, and that was fine,” Otis said. “Ultimately, the trail became an asset to development projects.”
Development became a tool as the years went on, said Zac Wiebe, a planning and natural resource specialist for Larimer County who worked on the Poudre Trail for years (and others).
“As private landowners were challenging, developers were open and willing to incorporate the trail in their developments,” Wiebe said, “and sometimes they paid for it.”
Getting Kodak was a big deal, Otis said, as it showed how to help soothe landowners’ concerns about the trail bringing hordes of people to their private property. He would use Kodak as a model for future negotiations, even if, at times, they weren’t immediately successful. Dale Hall, who sat on the Poudre Trail board as a Weld County Commissioner and now is the chairman and Greeley’s newly elected mayor, agreed that Kodak’s participation helped lay a future path for other landowners to join in. Every time a landowner agreed to an easement that would allow the trail to go across their property, another one would budge in negotiations.
“A number of them were waiting to see how successful it was before they would jump in,” Hall said. “The first conversations were not always about the end result. The first few landowners were the ones who had to take a chance.”
Indeed, the reason the trail was so piecemeal, especially on the Weld side, was because landowners didn’t always embrace the trail the way community leaders did. At times, both sides considered alternative routes to bypass especially stubborn landowners, although ultimately the Weld side never had to build one. Otis, like any good negotiator, tried to understand their concerns, even if they sometimes took decades to overcome.
“If you had private access to the river,” Otis said, “would you want the public to go through it?”
Both counties had the same issues with landowners despite their drastically different ways of building the trail. Otis at one point heard from a Larimer County government representative that the Greeley side was “lucky” because they weren’t the government. This makes Otis chuckle today — Larimer County, after all, had tax dollars and therefore didn’t have to spend endless hours raising money.
“Larimer County just wasn’t a model for us,” Otis said. “Tax money was the difference between the two, and I don’t mean that negatively for either side.”
But it is true that working as a nonprofit did have its advantages.
“I think people looked at it as a community effort versus a governmental effort,” Hall said.
Wade Willis, open space and trails manager for the Town of Windsor, admits to being “very jealous” of Fort Collins and the city’s ability to pay for the trail through its open-space tax. But he also said that approaching landowners as the government could be tricky.
“Those hackles go up automatically,” Willis said.
Winning trust, one easement at a time
When Kemp returned to work for Fort Collins a few years ago, one of his main goals was to complete the trail and have it connect all the way from Bellvue to Greeley. He, Willis and Wiebe would have three obstacles to overcome.
The trail had stalled out to the CSU Environmental Learning Center, located just east of Larimer County Road 9 and north of Rigden Farms, for years because of private property and I-25. This left a sizable gap east of the learning center all the way to west of Windsor. Local officials admitted to some frustration, as they hoped it could be connected as early as 2022.
Fort Collins had obtained a $2 million grant from Great Outdoors Colorado but had trouble getting an easement from a nearby landowner, halting any kind of progress from the learning center to its Arapaho Bend Natural Area, Kemp said. The landowner had plans to build a housing complex. The Strauss Lakes development is still in a review stage, with no formal application yet, although the Fort Collins City Council gave it positive but cautious feedback.
The city, feeling the deadline of the grant, instead asked the Great Western Railway of Colorado if it could build a trail on its nearby land. The railway was pretty much the opposite of a bullet train, and the city didn’t see much risk.
“Railroads can be difficult, but they were into it and supported it,” Kemp said.
Kemp, like Otis, also didn’t want to portray both landowners as evil.
“Landowners’ reasons for not allowing access are not unreasonable,” he said. “It takes time and mitigation, but in this case, we couldn’t get an easement.”
The railroad’s access allowed the city to build a trail from the learning center to Ridgen Reservoir, but another challenge came from an equally formidable obstacle. I-25 provided a barrier east of Arapaho Bend into Tinmath. It would be, of course, problematic to build a trail across one of the busiest highways in the West (the city never considered that an option). But a little serendipity came when CDOT decided to build its Express Lanes project from Berthoud to Fort Collins to relieve increasing traffic in the area. The project adds a toll lane to each direction of I-25. It’s doubtful the underpass would have happened otherwise, so let’s hear it for traffic! These portions of the trail were completed at the end of 2024.
The final piece proved just as challenging, as Larimer County had to juggle the perspectives of ditch companies, developers and landowners. One landowner was a hard no, Wiebe said, until they decided to move and suddenly had no issue selling the county an easement. All that juggling makes the final section a little wonky — it’s likely the farthest from the river — but “the connection was made at last,” Wiebe said.
“We had ditch companies, private landowners, developers, you name it,” he said. “Sometimes, it takes generations to get a willingness to let us go through.”
The Poudre River Trail has become an amenity for residents from Bellvue to Greeley. Courtesy City of Fort Collins.The Poudre River is no longer something stashed away by private landowners or city blockades or polluting industries. And Willis believes the Poudre Trail is what helped change that perception.
“It’s just been within the last 10 years that you’re invited to come down to the river,” Willis said. “It’s such a striking contrast. The trail showcases what is possible and what could be.”
Willis could be talking about his own city as well, given what Windsor did with the Eastman Park River Experience. The project, which has since been expanded, gives residents the chance to see, play in and even float the river in a tube. Fort Collins also turned a portion of the river that flows downtown into a whitewater park. This idea isn’t new: Many mountain communities have refreshed and reshaped their rivers into tourist attractions. But the trail helped bring the idea to Northern Colorado.
Windsor also approved its own quarter-cent sales tax for open space in 2022, no small feat in Weld County.
“People associated that with the Poudre Trail,” Willis said, “and that made it easier for them to support it.”
Indeed, the trail made it easier for the Cache La Poudre River National Heritage Area to fulfill its mission of bringing people together and engaging them in the river, said Rylyn Todd, spokeswoman for the area. The area is much like a national park but doesn’t own and maintain land.
“It’s provided our communities a chance to get out and experience the river,” Todd said, “It gives them a landmark.”
It’s possible that the Poudre Trail achieved even more than its creators intended. The fact that it connects so many communities has also evolved it into a bike commuter’s highway in the mornings and evenings.
“The scope of it and the scale exceeds all of our other connections to all these cities and towns,” Wiebe said. “We consider it sort of a spine that connects all manner of community assets, schools, parks, libraries, offices. That’s the big distinction between it and other trails. It’s a lot more than just recreation because of its regional connections.”
More than a trail, a river reclaimed
City officials consider it an economic driver as well. They are just now trying to understand the impact it has.
“Trails were historically built for recreation purposes only,” Kemp said, “but this isn’t only recreation. It’s a tool that people can use to get to where they need to be.”
Greeley may also take advantage of the trail’s spotlight on the Poudre. The city hopes to restore the Poudre, including some recreational uses similar to the way that Windsor and Fort Collins have done. They also hope to bring it to a more natural state. This is probably not something Greeley may have considered without the trail paving the way.
“There are floods in the U.S., and we might want to do some studying and figure out how we can mitigate those concerns,” said Dale Hall, “and there are ways you could create some recreational amenities. There’s some skeptics, but that is typical of any new thing, much like what we did in the ’90s with the trail.”
Otis left the board in 2024. The trail committee named a bridge west of the 71st Avenue section after him for his 30 years of service. Greeley finished its last piece in 2009. It felt like it was taking forever, he said today, but now it seems like a short time. Parents usually say the same thing.
Otis enjoys the trail as much as anyone these days. He continues to bike on it, or go for walks, and sometimes he loves to watch it flow by. He doesn’t take that for granted.
He lives close now, something he didn’t think was possible as a younger man. He still loves hearing about ways the trail could be expanded or lead to other opportunities with the river: He even serves on a committee that works on expanding the trail, and he promises some big news in the near future. You’d expect nothing less.
“That’s the thing,” Otis said. “When you can see it, it stirs the imagination as to what else you can do now.”
Poudre River Trail timeline:
• 1970s — Greeley City Council — and other groups —identify a trail along the Poudre as a future goal. More serious discussion begins taking place in 1988.
• 1978 — Fort Collins breaks ground on the first section of the Poudre Trail at Lee Martinez Park. Fort Collins would use this piece as its anchor, building east and west from this point.
• 1983 — The University of Colorado Denver completes a feasibility study that lays the groundwork for an integrated trail system between Weld and Larimer counties.
• 1987 — Fort Collins builds another section of the Poudre Trail in LaPorte as a part of what is called the East Poudre segment.
• 1991 — Poudre River Greenway Commission formed by the City of Greeley.
• 1992 — The state establishes the Conservation Trust Fund, the portion of lottery funds distributed to local governments for acquiring and maintaining parks, open space and recreational facilities. This would pay for most of the Poudre Trail in Larimer County.
• 1994 — The Trail’s groundbreaking in Weld County takes place on National Trails Day on June 2.
• 1994 — Greeley builds its first portion of the trail in Island Grove Regional Park. Windsor builds its first portion in Eastman Park. The Poudre Trail Corridor board forms with three members each from Weld County, Greeley and Windsor and an Intergovernmental Agreement between the three.
• 1995 — Greeley gets another piece in Island Grove, and Windsor builds a portion in Water Valley. The PTC board completes and adopts its master plan.
• 1995 — The West Poudre section is completed in Fort Collins from Lee Martinez Park west out to Taft Avenue.
• 1995 — This large East Poudre trail segment, just north of the Fossil Creek Reservoir Natural Area, is completed out to the Environmental Learning Center.
• 1997 — Windsor gets its first section on the Kodak property. Greeley hosts its first Trail-a-Bration, signaling that the trail is now a significant part of Greeley’s community. The Poudre River Trail Corridor Inc. gets official nonprofit designation.
• 1999 — Edmundson trail completed after several years of negotiations for an easement. The Hall section from 83rd to 95th avenues completed. A parking lot is built at 83rd Avenue.
• 1999 — Fort Collins begins to resurface the trail from asphalt to concrete, which, although hated by runners, saves the city in endless maintenance and repairs and probably a few bikers from hitting a pothole.
• 2002 — The Poudre Trail receives the National Recreation Trail designation.
• 2002 — The committee hosts a ribbon-cutting for Poudre River Ranch and the Lafarge section. More than 12 miles built by the end of this year in Weld County.
• 2004 — A big year for the Larimer County side, as Fort Collins completes construction on a portion that expands the trail west all the way from Taft Avenue to Lions Park Open Space into LaPorte. Around the same time, the county also builds a section that brings the trail all the way out to Watson Lake in Bellevue, where the trail starts (or ends) today.
• 2004 — A ribbon-cutting for trail sections from Island Grove to 35th Avenue, bringing the total to 18.4 miles in Weld County.
• 2005 — Ribbon-cuttings for the River East and Raindance sections in Windsor and the Duran/Sheepdraw sections from 59th to 71st avenues.
• 2006 — Bison Arroyo section completed west of Windsor and east of I-25 near Fossil Creek Reservoir Natural Area.
• 2006 — Trailheads completed at the Poudre Learning Center off 83rd Avenue and the so-called Red Barn section off 71st Avenue. The trail grows to 19.3 miles.
• 2008 — The final section of the Weld County portion of the trail, called the Golden Spike, is poured.
• 2024 — Fort Collins completes a section from the Arapaho Bend Natural Area to the new I-25 underpass, which the Colorado Department of Transportation agreed to build as a part of work done in that area. Fort Collins also finishes its final section within its city limits running west of Arapaho Bend to the Environmental Learning Center, creating a continuous trail from Bellevue to Tinmath.
• 2025 — Construction begins on the final piece of trail between Tinmath and Windsor. The project is expected to be completed in the spring of 2026.
This article was first published by BizWest, an independent news organization, and is published under a license agreement. © 2026 BizWest Media LLC.
The Poudre River Trail sign is pictured in Greeley on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (Brice Tucker/Staff Photographer)Hence then, the article about the poudre river trail s final mile was published today ( ) and is available on GreeleyTribune ( Saudi Arabia ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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