About Sand Creek Regional Greenway

Sand Creek Regional Greenway is a nearly 14-mile public greenway, connecting the High Line Canal in Aurora at Tower Road and Colfax Avenue, with the South Platte River Greenway in Commerce City. The soft-surface Sand Creek Regional Greenway trail completes a loop of 50 miles of off-street urban trails in the northeast metro Denver area.

The Sand Creek Regional Greenway trail is a work in progress. We have ongoing construction, detours, and modifications to our trail and we thank trail users for sticking with us through all these changes.

We call ourselves a Wilderness in the City - and we do not irrigate or maintain traditional landscaped city parks, only native plants and grasses. We are currently fundraising for trail improvements such as parks and natural areas, restrooms, trailheads, and picnic shelters.

Please bear with us as the trail changes over the next few years - we are trying hard to improve the Greenway. The areas around us also change on a regular basis, especially the Denver section, which is in the middle of a new development that will bring 20,000 new residents and 30,000 new jobs to within 3 miles of the Greenway.

With your patience and support, we will provide the best "wilderness in the city" experience possible as we wind through our diverse environment that includes industrial areas, new development, mature neighborhoods, and natural habitat.

All non-motorized uses of the trail are welcome: bicycling, horseback riding, walking, running, and pets on leashes. The trail is wheelchair accessible.

Sand Creek Regional Greenway is a cooperative project of the cities of Aurora, Commerce City, and Denver and non-profit organizations Sand Creek Regional Greenway Partnership and Stapleton Development Corporation.

Sand Creek at one time was a ribbon of water serving only the willows and wildlife. It became the scene of everyday life for the Native American, a guide for the frontier settlers and later, a provider for the growth of Colorado industry and agriculture. It will become an urban sanctuary and living classroom that serves today's inhabitants as well as future generations.

Because Sand Creek represents that study in contrasts between sanctuary provided by unfettered nature and the developing needs and desires of people, it also represents each generation's efforts to balance those contrasting demands. Sand Creek, a catalyst in the interconnected web of nature and community, can be a refuge, a place to play, a classroom and a model for how we restore urban waterways, maintain our diverse high plans legacy and enrich the communities along it.

-- Sand Creek Regional Greenway Master Plan, 1997