Great Sand Dunes National Park seeks public input on infrastructure improvements
DENVER (KDVR) — Too many people are visiting Great Sand Dunes National Park for its current infrastructure to keep up, according to park staff, who want the public to weigh in on a plan to improve it.
For decades, there were an average of 250,000-300,000 annual recreation visits to the park, but that’s all changed. In the past six years, annual recreation visits have reached nearly 600,000, impacting the park’s natural and cultural resources, visitor experience and mobility, safety and park facilities and operations.
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Other conditions also need remedying: Park rangers report safety risks at several locations because of overlapping vehicle and pedestrian circulation patterns and parking shortages. Those parking shortages also lead to informal parking, which hurts nature in the park. There are also long lines at the entrance station during peak months.
The park explained the issues with a visitor preference study. On summer weekends, an average of 1,200 cars enter the park. About 85% of inbound traffic goes to Medano Creek, and the Dunes lot fills by mid-morning, according to the park. After the lot fills, vehicles park on the side of Medano Creek Road.
The park is developing concepts to help address these issues.
However, there are a few concepts the park has determined will not work: Transit, such as buses or vans, is not feasible, according to the park, but could be if infrastructure is improved.
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Current concepts present approaches at six separate areas of the park: the entrance sign, the entrance station, Medano Creek Road, the existing Dunes parking lot, the horse trailer parking lot and a new multimodal trail.
The concepts would provide expanded parking at the Dunes and Medano Creek parking lots, as well as more parking at the entrance sign on Highway 150. The park also floated concepts of creating formal pull-offs for vehicles along the park entrance road.
The park also spoke about expanding the horse trailer lot and creating accessible parking for the amphitheater.
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The concepts also include a new multimodal trail that would follow Highway 150 on the wilderness boundary, connecting the Great Sand Dunes entrance sign to the visitor center and the Dunes. The new trail would be just over 5 miles long in entirety but would be a way to ensure visitors are not walking along the narrow, two-lane Medano Creek Road to access the dunes.
Connecting the multimodal trail to the dunes will be two new nature trails. Each nature trail will be adjacent to formal pull-off parking, “one of which will pass by the popular snag that is often used as a photo opportunity by visitors,” according to the park.
Interested individuals and groups can leave comments at the National Park Service park planning site through March 29. The plan is currently in its civic engagement phase and will need several refinements before it is enacted.
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