High Line Canal Trail in Cherry Hills Village: Fall Updates

Walk the Canal path south from Three Pond Park most September mornings and the routine barely changes: joggers, a few riders on the bridle trail, someone's spaniel investigating the cottonwoods. This year, a chunk of that routine got interrupted twice in one summer, and the reasons behind both interruptions say more about how this city runs its trail system than either closure does on its own.

The Footbridge Nobody Expected to Lose

On August 24, a large cottonwood came down across the pedestrian footbridge near Dahlia Hollow Park. The city closed the crossing immediately and has kept it closed since, with Public Works waiting on tree removal before it can assess whether the bridge itself needs repair. There's no announced reopening date. If your normal loop uses that crossing, the city's posted workaround is the pedestrian bridge near South Bellaire Street and East Oxford Place, which adds distance but keeps you off the closed span entirely.

Cottonwoods along the Canal are old and heavy, and this isn't the first time one has taken out infrastructure. What makes this closure worth tracking, though, is where it sits: right in the middle of a stretch that's already under construction for an entirely different reason.

The Resurfacing Project Already Underway a Few Hundred Yards Away

The section of Canal trail inside Cherry Hills Village runs from Belleview Avenue on the south end to Hampden Avenue on the north, spanning Miles 33 through 36.5 and passing directly by Three Pond Park, Dahlia Hollow Park, Quincy Farm, and Blackmer Common. The surface out there was laid down in 2016, and a decade of foot, bike, and hoof traffic has worn it thin enough that ruts have formed where the crusher fines wore away to bare dirt. The city's fix, funded through an Arapahoe County Open Spaces grant, is to add a new 2-inch layer of crusher fine material across the entire stretch, restoring a smooth surface and filling the low spots that collect water and mud.

The application for that grant put the work at about four weeks, managed in-house by the city's own Public Works crews rather than contracted out, with a completion deadline of December 31, 2026 attached to the grant funding. If you're planning a longer trail day this fall and want to avoid crew activity, this is the section to check before you go.

Here's the detail that matters if you use this stretch regularly: at the most recent count from the High Line Canal Conservancy, Mile 34 alone saw more than 177,000 annual users, with Mile 36 close behind at over 97,000. This isn't a quiet backwater trail getting occasional maintenance. It's one of the busiest segments of the entire 71-mile Canal, which is exactly why the city is treating a worn surface as worth a dedicated grant application instead of letting it wear down further.

Bears Are Also Part of This Story

The September issue of the Village Crier, the city's monthly newsletter that's gone out to Cherry Hills Village households for more than fifty years, flagged something else worth knowing before your next evening walk: this summer brought unusually high bear activity across the city. Colorado Parks and Wildlife's guidance, which the city links directly, is straightforward. Reports help wildlife officials track patterns and decide whether a response is warranted, but not every sighting triggers one. If a bear is simply passing through, the advice is to keep your distance and let it move on. Calls to 911 are reserved for genuine emergencies.

None of this means the trail feels different day to day. It means late-summer and early-fall walks, especially near dusk along the wooded sections by Quincy Farm and Blackmer Common, are a reasonable moment to keep dogs leashed and stay alert, the same way you would anywhere bears are active.

The E-Bike Rule That Just Got Reaffirmed, Not Reversed

The city also updated its e-bike and e-moto guidance on June 25, 2026, and the update is worth reading closely because it didn't loosen anything. E-bikes remain barred from Cherry Hills Village trails and parks, with one exception: use by an individual with a disability for mobility assistance. The classification lines are specific. Anything over 750 watts no longer counts as a legal e-bike under Colorado law, and anything over 4,476 watts, or displacement over 50cc, is legally a motorcycle requiring registration, insurance, and a motorcycle endorsement to operate anywhere, trail or road.

This isn't a new fight. Cherry Hills Village residents have been debating motorized trail access since at least 2021, when the Parks, Trails and Recreation Commission fielded rounds of public comment on the question, much of it from longtime residents worried about mixing higher speeds with the walkers, runners, and horses the Canal was built around. The city's answer, reaffirmed again this summer, has stayed consistent: keep the trail as it was.

How Cherry Hills Village's Trail Work Fits the Regional Plan

Put those four updates next to each other and a pattern shows up that a single news item wouldn't reveal on its own. The regional master plan behind the Canal's $100 million, five-year improvement campaign lists trail surface upgrades as one of its core goals, with a target of eight enhanced segments across the whole 71-mile corridor. As of the most recent progress dashboard, only two had been completed, and the segment currently in progress under that program is Denver's, not Cherry Hills Village's. The Cherry Hills Village line item on that same dashboard is tree planting, marked complete.

Cherry Hills Village applied for its own grant to reapply the same crusher fine material the trail has used since 2016. For the surface work, Cherry Hills Village applied for its own grant to reapply the same crusher fine material the trail has used since 2016. On this stretch, the grant-funded work is resurfacing, not a redesign: residents get a smoother version of the same trail they've always had.

That distinction is easy to miss if you only notice the caution tape at Dahlia Hollow Park or the crew working a few hundred yards up the path. But it's the reason this section still feels the way longtime residents describe it: unhurried, shared evenly between people on foot, on horseback, and on ordinary bikes, closer to how it was designed seventy years ago than to the trail systems being built alongside it.

If you're walking, riding, or riding a horse on the Canal this fall, the practical version is simple. Expect the Dahlia Hollow footbridge to stay closed until the tree is cleared and the structure is assessed, plan for possible crew presence on the Belleview-to-Hampden stretch through the fall, give any bear sighting distance rather than a story to tell, and leave the e-bike at home unless it's serving as a mobility device. None of it changes the character of the trail. If anything, it's the reason that character is holding.

If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of the Canal is actually worth, or want a clearer read on how Cherry Hills Village compares to nearby South Metro neighborhoods right now, Maritt Bird can walk you through it. Get Your Instant Home Valuation to see where your property stands today.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.