Did you know that City of Fort Collins Parks and Recreation hosted the first-ever Northern Colorado Trails Summit? It featured partners from municipalities and organizations committed to the completion of the Poudre Trail as well as non-car-centric connectivity throughout Northern Colorado.

Two things you may not know:

#1: almost every trail in Colorado that you love was funded by GoCo (funds and grants provided for through the Colorado Lottery, instituted by Governor Romer). It costs a little over $1M to create 1 mile of trail.

#2: connecting communities with trails seems like a luxury, but it’s one of the most important economic drivers in the country.

Some key stats about “the experience economy” – that is, the activities generated by and from being able to be connected through nature and the outdoors:

• $1.1 trillion in economic output
• 168 million participants annually
• 4.98 million jobs created
• $124.5 billion in federal, state, and local tax revenues

Cool, that’s the nationwide level; what about locally?

Well, as of 2021, around 600,000 people are estimated to use the Poudre Trail every year – and the final section connecting 45 miles of the Poudre Trail was just completed: https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/outdoors/poudre-river-trail-fort-collins

We can estimate that around $13B of economic impact occurs in Colorado alone and that translates to around $1B of tax revenue locally for just parks + rec-style activities. The data is super clear: Parks, Rec, + Trails (especially easy non-car connectivity) go hand-in-hand with economic prosperity.

When people are connected, and neighbors don’t have to use cars to get to places they care about, it’s a lot easier and more affordable to live there, and EVERYBODY wins.

This kind of institutional excellence doesn’t happen by accident. A lot of community input, expertise, and excellent easement purchasing from the City came together to help us build our trail network so far, and all indications are positive that the trend will continue. The super-talented experts at the City of Fort Collins Parks Planning department, including Jill, Dave, CSU, and a local consulting team, are working hard to ensure that we make the right kinds of moves for the upcoming Strategic Trail Plan, which you can read more about here: https://ourcity.fcgov.com/stp