At Greeley’s first major open space area, two roads diverge. One offers a longer journey and a bird’s eye view of Windsor. The other offers a bit of a wilder ride.

Both offer adventure, the kind you’d find in other northern Colorado natural areas.

Now, with the new Shurview property – as it’s called until a naming contest generates a new name – Greeley, Evans and Weld County residents no longer have to drive an hour to embrace life in the wild.

In neighboring Fort Collins, outdoor lovers make the most of Horsetooth Mountain Open Space, which boasts a huge reservoir. Lovelanders love Devil’s Backbone Open Space, a place with the jagged features of a Stegosaurus and trails that extend far enough that Gnar Runners hosts the Blue Sky Marathon on them every year.

Greeley’s new home to outdoor adventure isn’t huge but still serves up inspiring views of the mountains that make up Rocky Mountain National Park, with its famous notch-topped Longs Peak, a king of the Front Range 14ers.

From Shurview, you’re also sure to glimpse a great view of the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area to the south of Longs Peak. And on a crystal day, nature lovers will be able to see all the way to majestic Pikes Peak far to the south.

At Shurview, Raptors circle overhead hunting for snacks against a sunny sky, leaving their shadows swooping across the hilly terrain. Deer, foxes and even bobcats have been spotted at this new oasis in the city.

Already, Greeley’s new open space area has enticed as many as 1,000 visitors a month since it reopened at the end of March after closing temporarily for the winter. That’s at least double what the city was anticipating, said Kristen Wilkinson, a community conservation fellow with the City of Greeley.

Four miles of service roads fork by the trailhead. It’s a rustic area that may appear to be more of an extension of Missile Site Park on Greeley’s western edge. In fact, following the two small brown signs that lead you to the park, one that points to the turnoff off U.S. 34 West and the other that confirms you’re on the right road, the Colo. 257 Spur, is the only way to get to the Shurview property. Missile Site used to host a nuclear weapon back in the 1960s, but now hosts shelters where you can grill burgers and talk about the Cold War.

Deep, ragged bluffs buffer both trails, simply named A or B for now, making the area looking like Northern Colorado’s version of the Grand Canyon.

Trail B looks like a calmer start, straight across the service road that cuts through the prairie, but it also offers a longer adventure. It loops nearly two miles around the bluffs and back. If that’s not enough for you, Trail C juts off halfway through B, adding a half-mile jaunt to your journey.

Trail A, the road that heads right, or east from the trailhead, plunges like a rollercoaster after a few hundred yards alongside a hillside split by the bluffs. This short but intense trail is a mile-and-a-half of two up-and-downs and leads to a no-man’s land of prairie dogs and an idea of what it must have looked like for a homesteader.

A natural area is, as the name implies, an area that’s left more natural than, say, a playground with Kentucky bluegrass. In fact, that was Josephine Jones’ main requirement when she deeded her land to Greeley upon her death: that it be left in its natural state. The city did install a patch of grass and a playground at the park, but it follows the edict so exactly that it brought in cattle to trim the natural grass that grows around Jones’ former home.

Greeley and Windsor purchased Shurview in July 2022 as part of a deal with the Trust for Public Land. Its nearly 1,000 acres more than doubled Greeley’s total amount of open space.

Greeley closed off a large chunk of the area because of oil and gas wells and debris left behind from the 2008 tornado that did most of its damage in nearby Windsor. Other parts of the area are still under private ownership. There are signs near the end of the natural area so those running or hiking it should know not to go any farther, Wilkinson said.

Greeley officials have plans to improve the property based on feedback from community meetings. Ideas include appealing to as many different communities as possible, among them: wheelchair users, wildlife watchers, Hispanics who live nearby and may not take time to enjoy the outdoors along with refugees, some of whom have never had the privilege of enjoying an open space area. Shurview managers hope to expand the trails as far as Devil’s Backbone or Horsetooth someday.

“Our goal is to provide equitable access to the outdoors for everyone in Greeley,” said Justin Scharton, natural areas and trails superintendent.

Improvements will focus on the east side of Colo. 257, Wilkinson said. Getting them funded, however, will take time. At some point, voters may get to vote on open space sales taxes, but those are at least a couple years away after the Greeley City Council rejected the idea this summer.

“We are still in the running for some Congressional funds,” Wilkinson said. “That’s our hope right now. Otherwise it’s not in the budget to do anything next year.”

City leaders hope that Shurview fulfills a larger goal of providing every Greeley resident with the opportunity to enjoy a walk, bike ride or respite in a natural area close to home.

“This new natural area moves us closer to that goal,” Greeley managers said.