From The Pueblo Chieftain (Matt Hildner):
For more than 130 years, the Rio Grande as it flows through this town on the west side of the San Luis Valley has been a working river.
It’s here, where the San Juan Mountain foothills meet the San Luis Valley floor, that irrigation canals begin pulling off the river to water the barley, potatoes and alfalfa that drive the region’s agricultural economy.
But a coalition of groups is looking to add a little play to that equation by making a roughly half-mile stretch of the river more accessible to the public for fishing, some boating and a little water play.
“It’s an iconic river in the history of the U.S. and yet people don’t spend time there,” said Marty Asplin, co-director of Upper Rio Grande Economic Development.
And while there is hope the Del Norte Riverfront Project will bolster tourism for local businesses, its thrust will be drawing the town’s roughly 1,600 residents to the river.
At a recent fundraiser for the project, organizers found that sentiment while gathering input for a vision statement.
“Some people just wrote, very simply, ‘I want a place to take my kids,’ “ said Heather Dutton of the Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project.
Improving access to the river will take place on top of two basic building blocks.
The town government, which is a partner in the project, already owns riverfront property, and a roughly quarter-mile cement trail runs along the river from the nearby town park.
Second, Colorado Parks and Wildlife installed a fishing pier 20 years ago near the park, carved out a fishing hole along the pier and installed a rock structure just upstream in an effort to improve fish habitat.
Kevin Terry of Trout Unlimited said project planners and CPW will take another look at the “W” rock feature, and possibly replace it with a more modern one that could both improve fish habitat and serve as a play feature for small rafts, paddle boards and inner-tubers, depending on the level of stream flows.
“Right from the beginning on this project we want to work with them to get the best of both worlds,” Terry said.
A boat ramp, installed just downstream of the Colorado 112 bridge, would be a second element of the project.
And Terry said that site could also be home to a beach area.
It would be perfect for kids in the low flow conditions of late summer and early fall because it sits at the end of long, slow-moving pool, he said.
The project would also look at adding smaller, hardened access points upstream from the boat ramp.
