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This book will orient you to this magical little town of 646 people and miles of trails. There’s far more to do here than first meets the eye. The following pages provide the groundwork to deepen your time in Green Mountain Falls. But this guide is just the beginning. Go out and create your own experiences, find your own special places, feel at home in this welcoming small town. It will hold on to you, too.
Introduction
Green Mountain Falls holds on to you.
It has held on to the people who ventured here generations ago-their families living still in summer homes on the steep wooded hills. It holds on to visitors who stare up to the light and clouds of its ever-changing sky-and to dancers, visual artists, and other creatives looking for new spaces and inspiration for their work. It calls to forest bathers, solitude seekers, birdwatchers, wide-eyed kids, and those who can see the silhouettes of the past in structures of the present. It holds on to a deep history of geological uplifts, and the path of water, and people who once called this town-and this land-their own. Visit once and it’s not nearly enough: This is truly a charmed spot.
And Green Mountain Falls is holding onto itself. So many small towns across the West are succumbing to rapid change, bringing a certain sameness to once-unique Rocky Mountain communities. Not here. You won’t find franchise stores, flash development, or corporate coffee. The small, iconic lake and gazebo make it feel centered, civilized but not yet ready to give in to the mass development of cookie cutter homes. The high Victorian windows of the opulent Green Mountain Falls Hotel, long lost to fire, once overlooked this bucolic scene. Squint now and you can still make out the idylls of that bygone era in the children laughing and families gathering at the lake.
Get out of your car here and you breathe. It’s an immediate, welcome slowdown. And so what if your cellphone doesn’t quite work? You suddenly realize you have been focused on all the wrong things for too long. It’s time to park, walk, have breakfast. Find out who you are again. Don’t be surprised to see mule deer or even elk meandering down the main street of Ute Pass Avenue and past the colorful tumbling figures of the Keith Haring Fitness Court as if they were residents.
Green Mountain Falls has managed to stay true to itself by changing in the right way. Since the launch of Green Box Arts Festival in 2009, the town has built an identity as a place to nurture creativity against the backdrop of its natural beauty.
Experiencing art here, away from phones and responsibilities and the constant onslaught of visual media, you can hit reset.
Green Mountain Falls has art that belongs right here. It’s art that makes you realize this place is essential. You feel that in James Turrell’s Green Mountain Falls Skyspace- the opening in its ceiling allowing the sky to take center stage with its slow shifts of light and color-as well as in the ever-changing lineup of art installations adorning the town and its trails. But it is the wildness that fundamentally continues to shape this place.
The steep sides of the Pikes Peak massif head straight up and out of town, crisscrossed with dirt roads and rustic homes. To the other side, the ridge of Red Butte seals the town off from the buzz of the highway. Immerse yourself in the trails here, in the depth of the Douglas-fir forest and steep, slippery waterfall hikes. Take in the sky from Mount Dewey Peak. Listen for the calls of red-tailed hawks above the ridges and songs of pygmy nuthatch in the scrub around the Skyspace. Smell the ponderosa bark. Stick your feet in Fountain Creek. Be. This is the art-the ever-flowing stream, the light, the cottonwoods, the land.
Everything goes back to that basic truth.
This book will orient you to this magical little town of 646 people and miles of trails. There’s far more to do here than first meets the eye. The following pages provide the groundwork to deepen your time in Green Mountain Falls. But this guide is just the beginning. Go out and create your own experiences, find your own special places, feel at home in this welcoming small town. It will hold on to you, too.
This book will orient you to this magical little town of 646 people and miles of trails. There’s far more to do here than first meets the eye. The following pages provide the groundwork to deepen your time in Green Mountain Falls. But this guide is just the beginning. Go out and create your own experiences, find your own special places, feel at home in this welcoming small town. It will hold on to you, too.
