CAÑON CITY • It’s around here somewhere. Tiffany Brewer is sure of it. 

She’s sure, because she’s been here several times before ー this place where one walks atop red rock ridges that rise with the mountains not far from town. And yet one might feel closer to the national parks of Utah than to Cañon City. 

To be sure, Red Canyon Park is not Arches National Park. But there is an arch here. Somewhere.

“It’s right around here,” Brewer says, leading us on our first visit to Red Canyon Park. 

Red Canyon is getting more first-time visitors these days ー not long after the scenic, historic city-owned park got its first designated trails. 

Yes, more than 100 years after locals and distant dignitaries gathered here for the dedication of a destination that was likened to Garden of the Gods, Red Canyon Park now has proper trails to entice hikers, mountain bikers and equestrians. 

A professionally built trail system has opened, including a nearly 4-mile loop that explores colorful cathedrals, monoliths and towers, along with forested canyons and high points overlooking peaks and valleys. 

Brewer has been exploring trails around Cañon City over the past year, ever since she moved here from the Denver area. She’s gotten to know the trails that have increasingly attracted enthusiasts from far beyond southern Colorado ー the trails of Royal Gorge Park and Oil Well Flats, for example. 

“This is the best trail in Cañon,” Brewer says here along the new loop called Chipeta’s Way. “It’s so cool. I’m really giddy about it.” 

As is Rex Brady, Cañon City’s longtime parks director. 

“I just started my 31st year (with the city), and Red Canyon to me has always been that diamond in the rough,” Brady says. “There’s so much there, so many formations and so many vistas that people never got to see before.”

Before these trails roaming the park’s wild interior, the view was limited to the rough road cut in 1924. Years before that construction by a reported 127 volunteers, local officials had thought “to establish an easy route to this area north of Cañon City that rivals the Garden of the Gods.” That’s according to an account compiled by Lisa Studts, director of Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center. 

The account includes Guy Hardy, the congressman who championed legislation that led to the 1923 establishment of Red Canyon Park. He previously pushed similar legislation that transferred federal lands and created the city-owned Royal Gorge and Temple Canyon parks. 

“The thing about these parks, it was for people to enjoy nature, and they didn’t have to travel far,” Studts says. “It was like a way to vacation without vacationing.” 

And like the Royal Gorge ー and indeed like Garden of the Gods ー Red Canyon Park would be worth a vacation for tourists from afar. At least that was the thinking. 

“By the mid-1930s (during the Depression), the park fell into disuse and closed,” reads Studts’ account. 

The 1950s saw a “revitalization,” Studts says. Improvements to the road, picnic areas and campgrounds were made, and there was interest in a natural venue like Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The high school band held a concert to test the concept, Studts learned in her research. 

“And then, again, it sort of fell off the radar,” she says. 

Brady grew up in Cañon City through the ’60s and ’70s. 

“Red Canyon was just thought of as the local party place really,” he says. “It was just one of those outlying areas that the city owned and was under-utilized.”

It was not unlike Royal Gorge Park to the west. The Royal Gorge Bridge had gained acclaim, but the adjacent acreage that Hardy long ago set aside as parkland had remained a rugged, wooded expanse waiting to be realized.

Then came the 2013 wildfire. 

“After that fire, it just opened up so much ground that was once just impenetrable pinyon and juniper forest,” Brady says. “The only thing we could think to do was to start building trails up there.” 

The city spent the better part of the past 10 years building the network in Royal Gorge Park. In the process, the city started reimagining itself ー a hub of recreation in bright contrast to the prison hub perceived by outsiders.

“We just completed those (Royal Gorge Park) trails, and we said, ‘Hey, this is great, people are coming from all over the country to walk these trails and ride these trails,” Brady says. “That’s when we went to our next mountain park, which is Red Canyon.” 

There, he says, the city’s mission would continue: “We’re just trying to bring attention to these wonders that have been unseen.” 

With the new trails, mission accomplished. 

And more updates are on the way: Recently announced funding from Great Outdoors Colorado will improve and expand camping at Red Canyon Park. Brady says work is expected over the spring and summer. 

And so surely more people will be discovering the place that Studts calls “one of the best kept secrets of this area.” In that way, Red Canyon Park has been very different from the park it was thought to rival. 

Red Canyon is only “a little bit” like Garden of the Gods, Studts says. “There’s not nearly as many people.” 

It’s more comparable to another preserve in Colorado Springs: Red Rock Canyon Open Space. But that preserve is reached off a major highway, while Red Canyon hides off a fairly remote road through the countryside ー “off the beaten path,” Studts says. 

Off the beaten path, out of view and often out of mind over the decades. Still, people came to know formations here by names. There’s the Sphinx, Giant Monolith and Watch Tower. 

And there’s Window Rock ー the arch Brewer looks for now. 

She seems happy to show us first-time visitors around the new trail, happy to show us the arch hiding off a spur path, finally found. 

And she seems happy to learn something new along the trail: She had not known about the spire called Pioneer Rock, which displays a plaque with names of some of this area’s early settlers. Some of them helped establish this park a century ago. 

Brewer is always happy to learn. Which is why she’s come to love Red Canyon Park and the trails growing around Cañon City: “It’s new discovery,” she says. “That’s exciting.” 

If you go

Red Canyon Park is about 12 miles north of Cañon City, off U.S. 50 in town. Field Avenue leads to Red Canyon/Garden Park Road, which leads to County Road F24 into the park. After snowmelt, the rough and rugged road into the park can get muddy and hazardous, along with the trails. 

The nearly 4-mile Chipeta’s Way loop is marked at the first trailhead for horse trailers; passenger vehicles should continue a short distance ahead to the official trailhead. The trail is mostly marked and well-defined as it occasionally crosses the road and drainages, but one should be comfortable route-finding in brief areas atop rock.

Trails are mapped on the Colorado Trail Explorer (COTREX) app. A map can also be viewed and printed here: tinyurl.com/bdfptfbz