New and old West found at Denver area park — and a view that dazzles

DOUGLAS COUNTY • He heard about the bison. But John Boucuvalas knew little else about the place he was going one morning this summer.

He was just passing through when he pulled off the highway between Denver and Colorado Springs and thought he was mistaken.

“I couldn’t tell if it was some stupid housing complex or something,” he said.

It might feel that way whichever way you approach: north from Castle Pines off Interstate 25 or south from Sedalia off U.S. 85. Soon, Daniels Park Road arches over a ridge that suddenly feels far removed from any city.

At an overlook high above a sweeping, green floor spotted with bluffs and buttes, facing west to an endless sky and the mountains spanning from Pikes Peak to Longs Peak to Wyoming’s Mummy Range, Boucuvalas remarked: “This definitely doesn’t feel like Denver.”

Daniels Park, however, is property of the city and county of Denver. It’s a a member of the Denver Mountain Parks system that includes, more famously, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Lookout Mountain above Golden and Echo Lake beneath Mount Evans.

Unique to the system, Daniels Park finds itself in a high plains environment — no less splendid than those mountainous parcels. It’s tucked away at a point where urban sprawl meets nature.

The cooperative between Denver and Daniels Park Road-managing Douglas County proudly points to the showcase of open space here. The park is bordered by Cherokee Ranch and the Highlands Ranch Backcountry Wilderness Area.

That’s close to 12,000 acres of continuous protection between houses and highways, said Ryan Phillian, the resident caretaker at Daniels Park.

Other residents along the peripheries know about the park, he said. “But then quite a few people don’t, and it’s right in our backyard.”

Those who discover it are drawn as Boucuvalas was. He heard about the bison.

Daniels Park is home to Denver Mountain Parks’ second of two herds formed in the name of conservation. In 1938, bison came here to the pastures on either side of today’s Daniels Park Road. They came from the herd previously established at Genesee Park, members of the native animals remaining around Yellowstone.

The bison aren’t the only symbols of the Old West on display at Daniels Park.

A stone marks the site said to be where legendary explorer, trapper and Army officer Christopher “Kit” Carson made his last campfire in 1868. He was on his way to his final resting place in Fort Lyon.

It is believed he was on his way via one of Colorado’s earliest territorial roads, designated for its place between two emerging population centers. For its high perch and wide-open views of any approaching friend or foe, the place was thought to have been an ideal spot for camp and meet-ups.

The route is now Daniels Park Road, which was an early focus of today’s partnership between Denver and Douglas County. A goal of the 2007 master plan was traffic control on the then-dirt stretch between building booms in either direction through the 1980s and ‘90s.

The road was paved, speed limits were posted and pedestrian crossings were set for visitors viewing the bison and the mountains — what land managers proudly proclaim as “one of the most expansive vistas in Colorado.”

Prior to then, in the 1970s, a portion of Daniels Park was set aside in the vision of Richard Tall Bull. He wished for a place where Native people around Denver could gather for powwows and other special occasions. The gated Tall Bull Memorial Grounds are reserved for those people, marked by teepees seen from the road.

Another scene from the road: the restored barn and silo recalling Florence Martin. She was an Australian socialite-turned-Denver socialite and dear friend of William Cooke Daniels, who sat upon a retail empire around town.

He presided as well over the ranch of historic, panoramic intrigue. Upon his death in 1918, Daniels left the land to Martin.

Her first gift to the Denver public was the acreage where a still-standing, stone structure was built for picnics in 1922. Her second was the rest of the ranch where today’s bison roam — in all about 1,000 acres.

Compared with what Martin would have seen, the view is different now. Phillian, the park caretaker, has reflected on what “Kit” Carson would have seen. “I’m sure it would have been very different,” he said.

The marker for the man’s supposed last campfire is somewhere near the park’s boundary with the golf course. Those fairways and greens mingle with some surrounding high-rise walls and rooftops — for the unsuspecting visitor on the way, inspiring a feeling of anything but wild.

But between the land left open and the far-reaching mountains and the bison roaming on, the Old West can at least be imagined. Imagined, perhaps, during one of the perfect sunsets here.

Admirers wish the show could last forever. They watch from one overlook with a bench inscribed with a helpful message: “Always look beyond where the eye can see.”