Walk down to Monument Creek west of Colorado College this week and the Cache La Poudre/Mesa Road Bridge has no road on it. The concrete deck is gone. The steel girders and bearings underneath have been stripped of their paint, and city crews are setting trays across the bare beams so a new deck can be poured on top. A crane parked on the west bank is lifting the concrete deck panels into place.
The bridge is 232 feet long. It was built with Works Progress Administration money after a May 1935 flood destroyed the rustic crossing that stood there before, and it opened to traffic in spring 1936. It is the only Art Deco bridge left in El Paso County. The city's rehabilitation keeps that 1936 structure and replaces only the deck on top of it. Until the work is done, Monument Valley Park behaves like two parks joined only at its edges.
Two Parks and One Creek
Since April 20, the bridge between Glen Avenue and Mesa Road has been closed to everyone: drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. The Cache La Poudre Street/Mesa Road curve is closed to cars too, because crews use it as a staging area. The City of Colorado Springs project page sums up the situation in one line: "it is best to park on the side of Monument Creek where your activities are located."
That rule matters because the two sides of the creek hold different things. The west bank has the pickleball courts, the picnic pavilion, the pool and the Horticultural Art Society complex, and all of them are now reached from Glen Avenue at Uintah Street. Colorado College sits to the east, and the city sends college visitors along marked detours to park on that side. The city also says parking will be "extremely limited," especially east of the creek, and asks drivers to carpool or plan to walk farther.
| Destination | How to get there while the bridge is closed |
|---|---|
| Pickleball courts | Drive in on Glen Avenue and park in the lot west of the bridge, or walk up the trail from the south |
| Horticultural Art Society Demonstration Gardens | Head south from Uintah on Glen Road; parking is on the west side next to the railroad tracks, with street parking near the Heritage Garden |
| Picnic pavilion | Enter on Glen Avenue at Uintah Street and park west of the creek |
| Monument Valley Pool | Closed for the rest of 2026; it reopens for the 2027 pool season |
| Colorado College | Follow the marked detours and park east of the creek |
The Horticultural Art Society posts its own directions at the top of its homepage, and they match the city's. Monument Valley Pool won't need a detour until next year. The Pikes Peak YMCA pool status page, updated Oct. 24, lists it as closed for the remainder of 2026.
The creek rule applies this weekend too. The Fine Arts Center at Colorado College is holding its free Día de Muertos celebration on Sunday, Nov. 1, from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. and Monday, Nov. 2, from 4 to 8 p.m. The program includes a community ofrenda, live music, a mercado and a children's costume parade on both days. If you're pairing it with an afternoon walk on the far bank, park on the side where you'll spend the most time and cross the creek on foot.
Through Early November, the West Trail Is Split Too
For most of the project, the Pikes Peak Greenway Trail got off lightly. There was a short, well-marked detour on the east side of the creek, and the west side stayed fully open. That changed on Monday, Oct. 12, when the city closed the west-side trail for up to four weeks so the crane could work. Barricades now stand at the Duck Pond north of the bridge and at the pickleball courts south of it. KRDO reported that the closure "will essentially cut the trail in half."
At up to four weeks, the closure's outside limit falls around the second week of November. Until the city lifts it, these are the official crossings:
- Heading south: cross Monument Creek on the Uintah Street bridge and continue on the east leg of the Greenway Trail.
- Heading north: cross at the pedestrian bridge near the south end of the park and pick up the east leg there.
- On the east side: the trail stays open, with the same short pedestrian detour that has been in place since spring.
- Going to the courts or gardens: a small, limited-use section of the west trail stays open near those destinations.
KOAA's Oct. 14 report described the same setup: the closure covers the west side of Monument Creek between the Duck Pond and the pickleball courts. The project page is the place to check before a morning run, since it will show when the barricades come down.
Why the City Kept the 1936 Steel
This stretch of Monument Creek has already lost one bridge. Monument Valley Park was created by city founder General William Jackson Palmer and opened to the public in 1907. The 1935 flood took out the first rustic crossing, and the WPA-era replacement has carried traffic for about 90 years since. The park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
The city designed the 2026 work to keep that structure in place. Its project page describes "carefully removing and replacing the historical bridge deck, while preserving the structure underneath." Before design started, crews surveyed the WPA walls, the fascia panels, the light standards and the roadway from Glen Avenue to Mesa Road. Existing lights and fixtures will be reused or copied as closely as possible, and new signs will match the existing ones. The city says it consulted the adjacent neighborhoods, Colorado College, historic preservation groups, Friends of Monument Valley Park, the bicycling community and the Parks, Recreation & Cultural Services department. Design and construction are funded by the city through the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority.
KKTV reported on Oct. 1 that the project had moved from demolition to rebuilding. Ryan Phipps, the city's Capital Improvements Manager, told the station what had to be finished first:
"We remove all the paint from the girders, we remove the paint from the bearings, all of the stuff that's underneath, and so that's a huge milestone is to get to that point so that we can start putting everything back together."
In the same KKTV piece, Phipps acknowledged that the crew is working "in the middle of a high-activity area with the trails, the college, and the park on the west side" and thanked the community for its patience. The crane on the trail exists because the city is rebuilding on the old steel instead of replacing it. Laying new deck sections onto a 1936 frame takes heavy lifting from the bank.
What Comes Back When the Bridge Reopens
The finished bridge will look much like the one that closed in April, with several changes for people crossing it:
- A new deck on the original structure
- Wider sidewalks
- Roadway and drainage improvements
- Bridge lighting, with historic fixtures reused or closely copied
- Better accessibility
- Improved trail crossings at both the east and west ends of the bridge
The crossing improvements will matter most to Old North End residents on foot. Today, a walk from the college side to the Horticultural Art Society gardens means going north to Uintah or south to the pedestrian bridge. Once the bridge reopens, that walk goes straight across again, on wider sidewalks than before.
The city hasn't set a reopening date yet. The project page gives the timeline as "through the end of 2026." KKTV reported on Oct. 1 that the city hopes to reopen the bridge by winter, though some remaining work could continue into spring. The pool's reopening is already scheduled for the 2027 season. Until the bridge reopens, use Uintah Street to the north and the pedestrian bridge to the south, and park on the side of the creek you're visiting.
For more than three decades, Trish Ingels has followed Old North End projects like this one, the slow public work that changes how a historic neighborhood connects to its park. If you're thinking about a home near Monument Valley Park and want to know how its paths, bridges and edges affect day-to-day life, request a private consultation with Trish.
