Western Colorado's Base Camp: Highline Lake State Park

By Josh Gaunt, Content Writer, Romtec, Inc.

Highline Lake State Park is a recreation haven during the summer months and used as a base camp for exploring western Colorado.

Highline Lake State Park is in Loma, CO which is 25 miles west of Grand Junction. The park is managed by Colorado Parks & Wildlife and the Park Manager, Alan Martinez.

The park had an outdated restroom building with limited capacity creating long lines during the busy season from the beach and picnic area.

Steve Ryan, a long-time project manager with Colorado Parks & Wildlife spearheaded the project to get the restroom replaced quickly. “It wouldn’t have happened without Steve and he got it done,” Martinez said. “The biggest driving factor was the old restroom building was built in 1970 and was very outdated, when it was built, it was built for 1970 visitation. The men's and women’s restrooms had three toilets each. We have seen a drastic increase in visitation so it was far too small for the amount of people we had coming to the park.”

Over the past year Highline Lake State Park has had 199,612 visitors. “We’re in the desert, and most people don’t think of Colorado being a desert,” Martinez said. “But with our large swim beach, we attract a lot of people when its 100 degrees out. We have a large turf grass area with large Cottonwood trees which provides a lot of shade as well as picnic tables and grills, so it a popular place in the summer. It’s a focal point that draws our largest number of visitors.” The park was looking for a pre-designed option to speed the replacement process up. The parks contacted Romtec, Inc. who designs, manufactures, supplies, and installs park and recreation buildings nationwide. The new park restroom has eight toilets on each side and a family restroom.

“There are no lines which we had a lot of when we outgrew our old building,” Martinez said. “The appearance is beautiful. The roof truss overhang is one of the most popular spaces that people settle into, close to the restrooms to provide shade that is also close to one of the beaches. People are excited about this new project and commenting on it all the time.”

The restroom building caters to all day visitors during the summer months as it serves as a base for the beach, picnic areas, along with campground users, and the trail systems.