Jefferson County officials are proposing gates at Lookout Mountain Road, closing the road up the mountain to traffic at night after a history of people trashing the mountain after the sun goes down.

The area, between Chimney Gulch Trail and Lookout Mountain Park, goes through both Jefferson County Open Space and Denver Mountain Parks. While the park hours list the area as closed from one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise, the road itself remains open during those hours. 

However, law enforcement contacts, trash and property damage show that the park hours aren’t being followed in the area — making activity after dark a safety hazard and a threat to the mountain’s natural and cultural resources, according to the Jefferson County Open Space management proposal.

Mary Ann Bonnell, the visitor services and natural resources director for Jefferson County Open Space, said conversations about closing the road at night have been going on since the 1980s, but with newer technology that can be used with gate systems, it’s becoming a much more viable option than it used to be.

Many of the concerns people have with gates across roads, such as access in emergencies or during other road closures, can be addressed now. When the conversation was happening years ago, the technology for that didn’t exist, Bonnell said.

The Lookout Mountain area is notorious at night for getting trashed and misused, she said. People in nearby neighborhoods frequently hear gunfire in the area and Bonnell’s team has found shell casings while doing maintenance work. 

Her teams have also found frequent graffiti, “unbelievable” amounts of litter and remnants of “unsafe behavior,” such as alcohol bottles, needles and marijuana dispensary containers near parking areas, she said.

“It indicates that people are doing unsafe things up there like drinking and driving,” Bonnell said. “It’s just a lot of things that are not congruent with either our, or Denver Mountain Parks’ mission of providing healthy nature-based activities.” 

Mobility data from Denver Mountain Parks shows that the area is busier at midnight than it is at 10 a.m. on weekends, Bonnell said. 

While mobility data isn’t always fully reliable, it can give a good sense of trends, she said. 

The data has also showed a significant number of park hour violations, including people parking in pullouts and lots that are marked with signs stating parking is not allowed after park hours, she said.

While her team doesn’t have demographic data, Bonnell said her experience being up there at night has shown that it’s mostly young people who hang out in the area after hours.

“There’s a lot of marijuana and you can smell it in the air, there’s a lot of firearm use, drinking and trash,” she said. “I’ve found underwear, feminine hygiene products, condoms and needles.”

The proposed gates, if installed, would open automatically to allow vehicles to exit the closed area, would be able to be opened by law enforcement and emergency responders, maintain access to pedestrians and bicyclists, and would be opened to accommodate emergencies including evacuations and adjacent roadway closures or detours, according to the proposal.

A variety of stakeholder groups support the proposal, including Denver Mountain Parks, Jefferson County Open Space, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, Foothills Fire, Golden Fire and Colorado School of Mines. 

However, despite the support from county officials, Bonnell’s team has still heard backlash, with many people saying they shouldn’t punish good people just because they can’t manage the bad behavior on the mountain. 

“I hear that and I absolutely get that, but I also know that gates have really helped us in other places to save these beautiful places from the abuse they get overnight,” Bonnell said. “We know gates don’t make everyone happy.”

Adding extra patrol to the area wouldn’t necessarily help as much as gates entirely closing it off would, she said. The amount of traffic up and down the mountain would make it such that as soon as people get cleared from a pullout or other area, more would arrive.

The Lookout Mountain area is home to Denver Mountain Parks heritage resources, a variety of wildlife including mountain lions, rattlesnakes and bears, and nesting golden eagles, which are a threatened species, she said.

Trash on the mountain and other destructive behavior can be harmful to those natural and cultural resources.

While the conversation about adding gates has been happening since the 1980s, Jefferson County started formalizing the idea in 2023 — when officials had an internal conversation about it with other county officials and government entities to get feedback.

After that conversation, they have started gathering public feedback, identifying common themes of concern about possible gates and figuring out how they might be able to address those concerns, Bonnell said.

Going forward, the county will have another public meeting, with dates yet to be decided, for more feedback. 

“It’s a very long process because we know there will be opposition, so we want to make sure we’ve heard people, we’ve validated their concerns and that we try to build addressing their concerns into the design,” she said. 

There is not a specific date the gates would go into place, but Bonnell said it would likely be in an off-season.

“Even if we were to get organized early, it wouldn’t be wise to start using them in the middle of summer because I think we would really disperse and frustrate a lot of people,” she said. “If we started using them in winter or late fall or even early spring, it would be more word of mouth and be less of a headache.”

There are lots of moving parts and it’s possible the proposal won’t move forward if it gets enough opposition. Bonnell’s team is keeping their ears open to feedback and is hopeful that that proposal will move forward.

“I really do think the mountain deserves more protection than we’re giving it.”