Front Range
Lions Open Space keeps a Laporte stretch of the Poudre public
A Porch Note from Colorado Porch — plain-English local details for all 64 Colorado counties.
Near Laporte, on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River, Lions Open Space makes more sense than any road sign for the trails around it. It offers day-use picnicking, fishing, hiking, and biking, and it holds the westernmost end of the Poudre River Trail, which carries on west as the Pleasant Valley Trail.
That puts the site at a hinge point between the Fort Collins river trails and the older Laporte and Bellvue side of the valley. The paved trail tracks the river through riparian habitat and past local roads toward Watson Lake. A short way off, Bingham Hill Park offers a different angle, with picnic shelters and a lookout over Pleasant Valley and Bellvue.
What ties it together is that Lions Open Space, the Pleasant Valley Trail, and Bingham Hill Park are managed as a set. They are close pieces of one small landscape, river bottom, trail corridor, and hilltop view, each a few minutes from the next.
It helps to think of them as one outing rather than three separate stops. Pick the river bottom for an easy afternoon or the hill for the long view, and a glance at the county page for directions and current rules is all the planning a first visit really needs.
Sources
Official or primary sources used for this note. Local details can change, so confirm before acting.