15 Dec 2014
Latest GOCO Open Space Grant request to help fund upper Raiders Ridge purchase–denied
Last Spring, the City of Durango applied for a grant from Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) to help purchase 113 acres of Jake Dalla’s land on the extended Raiders Ridge.
This week, we got word that the City’s GOCO grant request had been denied, which means that Durango might instead follow their backup plan to purchase all or part of Dalla’s land with with its own money.
While a purchase made with matching GOCO and City of Durango funding would likely result in the land going under a conservation easement with La Plata Open Space Conservancy, a purchase made with City dollars alone would not require putting the land under a conservation easement, according to Durango’s Assistant Community Development Director Kevin Hall.
In the mean time, go check out the challenging rocky terrain that Raiders Ridge has to offer. Just beware of the muddy ascent on Skyline if you are going up from the northwest side. This time of year the section through the oak dries out very slowly.
Photo by Brian Gaddy.
