The City of Durango will be closing on 113 acres of Jake Dalla’s Raiders Ridge property at the end of December, which could come with the help of a Great Outdoors Colorado grant. With or without the grant, the city is under contract to purchase the land from Dalla at his requested price of $6,000 dollars per acre. If the GOCO grant is not awarded, the city will purchase the 113 acres in two phases, said Durango’s Assistant Community Development Director Kevin Hall. Assistant Community…

The president of La Plata Open Space Conservancy scoffed at the requests of fourteen mountain bikers who asked two city boards at a joint meeting not to close several trails on city lands that are slated for closure. Jerry Zink, President of La Plata Open Space Conservancy and owner of Sunnyside Meats processing facility, erroneously told a crowd of mostly mountain bike advocates that conservation easements don’t respond to need, and that Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) does not award grants for user-specific projects. La Plata…

At the polls this November, I will be among the many registered voters who agree that when you shop at the grocery store, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and most of the products produced with GMOs should be labeled. I’m proud to live in Colorado knowing that most people around me care about their health. One example is our people have the lowest rate of obesity of any other state in the U.S., according to the United Health Foundation. Caring about your health means knowing what’s…

Next Monday at 5:30 p.m., our local trails on city lands will need advocates at a city meeting where two boards will be discussing whether or not to destroy seven popular trail segments  that are marked for closure. After Durango’s Assistant Community Development Director Kevin Hall and the Natural Surface Trails Committee inventoried trails on city lands, a map was created, which color coded several trails in Overend Mountain Park and Dalla Mountain Parks for closure, based on Hall’s claims that they were redundant, or…

A captain and the chief of Durango Fire and Rescue have asked the City’s Parks and Recreation Director to repair the access to Horse Gulch Road to ensure a timely and efficient response by rescue personnel in the event of a fire or medical emergency. Chief Daniel Noonan and Captain Leo Lloyd of Durango Fire Protection District sent a letter to Durango’s Parks and Recreation Director Cathy Metz asking for the repairs, while outlining the historical recreational uses of the road. They said that a…

Following a heavy monsoonal rain on Sept. 21, 2014, tons of flood debris and water trashed the brand new Horse Gulch Trailhead in Durango. Horse Gulch Blog LLC filed an open records request with the city to find out how much money they spent removing mud, rocks, sticks and water from the trailhead. Much of the debris needing removal had accumulated upstream of  four ovular culverts installed below some newly-paved parking spaces. Ten city employees using a backhoe, a skid steer, two mini excavators, three…

Emails submitted by readers of Horse Gulch Blog to the City of Durango about the possible closure of seven popular trail segments on city lands has elicited a written response of disapproval from the receiving official regarding the submission format. Assistant Community Development Director Kevin Hall is the city official receiving the emails from mostly local citizens in resistance to the possible closure of trail segments that two city boards will be considering at a joint board meeting on October 27. Hall wrote me yesterday…

Two Durango advisory boards will discuss and consider the closure of several popular trail segments at Overend Mountain Park, Dalla Mountain Park and other city-owned public lands at a meeting in October. Seven of these trail segments that were recommended for closure by the City of Durango’s Natural Surface Trails Committee were reported on in a previous post on this blog. It’s up to people like you who are willing to make  your voices heard in order to prevent many of these trail segments from…

Two Durango advisory boards will discuss and consider the closure of several popular trail segments at Overend Mountain Park, Dalla Mountain Park and other city-owned public lands at a meeting in October. Horse Gulch Blog is hosting a petition drive to defend the existence of some of these trails as a complement to this story aimed at raising awareness of where these trails are and who benefits from them. Many of the trails that were marked for closure by the Natural Surface Trails Committee (NST…

This Fall, Durango residents may begin working on several trails for the new Chapman Hill Bike Park thanks to a $30,000-dollar allocation for their designs that was unanimously approved by the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. Alpine Bike Parks, a full-service design/build contractor out of British Columbia, will be hired to complete a site analysis, a phased development plan for the park, and final design documentation for Phase 1 of the project, according to Assistant Community Development Director Kevin Hall. “Alpine Bike Parks was one…

Colorado voters will have the opportunity this November to decide if the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment should require the labeling of genetically modified foods. Known as Initiative 105, The Colorado Right to Know Act, proponents Larry Cooper and Cheryl Gray have been pushing the campaign through their organization called Right To Know Colorado. They keep their followers updated on the Facebook page for Right To Know Colorado. In order for activists to qualify the initiative for the ballot, the Colorado Secretary of…