Agua Pura

Discover rivers and lakes around home that enrich a mile-high lifestyle

By Mark Samuelson

HOW FAR IS IT FROM METRO DENVER to a serious body of water? Perhaps one with big waves and miles of sand or fresh lobster and saltwater taffy? The Pacific shore at San Diego is 830 miles west, while Cape Cod is 1,800 miles east. Minnesota’s Land of Ten Thousand Lakes is just 650 miles northeast.

But water is part of the image that lures Coloradans to their Mile High surroundings now—not just in lakeside settings up in the Rockies, but right in the city and its suburbs.

“Coming out here, there was the pain of leaving the ocean,” recalls Steve Watson of Parker, who moved his family east from California decades ago. “I fell in love with the lakes here; it’s given me a connection to Colorado.”

It wasn’t always this way. When explorers Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long, who each left his name on 14,000-foot peaks near Denver, reported on the vast expanse along the Rockies, they both gave a bleak account of water resources—giving readers back east the image of a Sahara-like landscape. But thanks to the massive engineering projects of the last century, tunnels beneath the Continental Divide now carry water eastward from the Colorado River drainage, creating many of the popular scenic reservoirs of today.

Aurora Reservoir

That’s how the 31,000-acre-foot Aurora Reservoir, which opened in 1989 and drew some 686,000 visitors last year, feeds its sailing waters and swimming beach. Much of the inflow passes from Lake Dillon under the divide by way of the 23-mile-long Roberts Tunnel built in 1962, and from there into the South Platte River, to Strontia Springs Reservoir in Waterton Canyon, and by pipe under the Denver Tech Center to the lake near E-470 and Quincy Avenue.

“We’re a regional resource for water sports,” says Brian Green, the City of Aurora’s acting manager of open space and natural resources, adding that the reservoir offers one of nicest sand beaches away from any coast, with a designated swim area staffed during the season by a lifeguard.

Meanwhile, that reservoir provides drinking water for Aurora residents. “So, it’s very clean and clear, and for that reason, we don’t allow regular motorized watercraft with fuel-burning motors,” says Green. Aurora Reservoir— like a growing number of water recreation sites serving metro Denver—caters exclusively to popular sports that are naturally powered and non-polluting, like sailing, stand-up paddleboarding, kayaking, windsurfing and kiteboarding.

“We’re a huge destination for kayaks and paddleboards,” Green adds, noting that devotees like that they’re not competing on the water with powerboats and jet skis. “It’s a great place for windsurfers. You get a lot of predictable wind.”

Cherry Creek State Park

Wind-powered craft first caught the fancy of Jeff Lampe, “commodore” of the Denver Sailing Association, in 2015 in Florida, where he was recovering from a lower leg amputation following a motorcycle accident. With a new leg, Lampe learned to sail and was back skiing in Colorado within months after the surgery. Later, when he made the Centennial State his home, he was relieved to be able to continue to enjoy sailing.

Now Lampe and his shipmates ply the waters of several metro lakes and make their home base at Cherry Creek State Park, where the marina opens onto an 850-acre, 3-mile-long lake.

“It’s a large part of life for me and probably takes more time than my girlfriend would like,” Lampe says. He and other members sail all over the state and have sailed competitively on the coasts. Still, they enjoy the nice clubhouse at Cherry Creek, which is close to the park’s privately operated Lake House, with a bar, dining and concerts overlooking the marina. “We want to grow the sport, so people know what sailing is about,” Lampe adds (Learn more at denversailing.org)

Aside from requiring specialized skills, Lampe notes that sailing puts a particular focus on the megadrought across the west that has affected local water levels. Since sailboats have a four- or five-foot-deep keel below the craft that gives the ability to navigate into the wind, and they require deeper water than powerboats to launch—or a crane to hoist the vessel. Even a three-foot drop in the water level causes problems, something the association is working on with the state park and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Although drought is the risk today, Denver has suffered severe floods, including one in 1844 before the city was founded, that reportedly filled the South Platte Valley from bluff to bluff. In 1948, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building the dam across Cherry Creek, 11 miles upstream from downtown, to mitigate the peril (the park opened in 1959); then followed up by building Chatfield Dam across the South Platte, following a 1965 flood on the river that wiped out hundreds of homes and businesses.