Front Range
Riverbend Ponds turns old gravel pits into wetland habitat
A Porch Note from Colorado Porch — plain-English local details for all 64 Colorado counties.
Seven holes once dug for gravel sit at the heart of Riverbend Ponds, and they have become the best part of it. The mining stopped, the water filled in, and along this stretch of the Cache la Poudre River the old pits now anchor a wetland that draws people for fishing, birding, walking, and quiet loops close to town.
The bird life is what stays with most visitors. More than 200 species feed, rest, nest, and migrate through Riverbend Ponds, among them green herons, ducks, American white pelicans, and double-crested cormorants. The Colorado Division of Wildlife stocks the ponds with warm-water fish, so the same water that once served the gravel trade now holds a working fishery.
About three miles of natural-surface trails and a boardwalk lead out from the Cherly Street entrance, and an underpass carries you toward Cottonwood Hollow, Running Deer, and Colorado State University’s Environmental Learning Center. A short visit here can string together several natural areas at once. It is a made-and-remade landscape, reshaped twice over and now settled in beside the river.
Sources
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