Rito Seco Park in Costilla County is expanding by 398 acres after local landowner Mike Kruse completed a conservation easement in partnership with Colorado Open lands. He intends to sell the land to the county. Trail expansion and public access planning will begin later this year.
“I think it is a very good easement for the county and for the community to work with because that land is very special. I’m so glad we don’t have to put houses there and we can leave the creek as it is. It deserves to remain open,” Kruse said.
The land will be a permanent, protected fixture for public recreation and wildlife habitat in Costilla County. Colorado Open Lands said it is extremely rare for a parcel like this to come up for sale in the San Luis Valley.
Costilla County Open Space coordinator Lawrence Pacheco said, “Opportunities to conserve keystone parcels like this may only come around once in a generation. The chance to purchase a large property that borders the Greenbelt Open Space and Rito Seco Park is a huge win for the residents and visitors of Costilla County.”
The property consists of forested hillsides, open meadows, and riparian areas. It is surrounded on three sides by the Sangre de Cristo Greenbelt. It is just to the east of Rito Seco Park which is one of just a few recreation spots in the county.
“The county understands that we will never have high-profile public lands like other SLV counties with the South San Juan Wilderness in Conejos, the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness in Saguache or the Great Sand Dunes in Alamosa, but by acquiring strategically located parcels and adding signage and amenities, the county hopes these hidden gems can be a source of pride for residents and a unique destination for visitors,” said Costilla County administrator Ben Doon.
Rito Seco Park opened in July 2022. The project had been in the works for more than 12 years at that point. A grant from Great Outdoor Colorado helped push it to completion and Colorado Open Lands then also helped purchase private land for Costilla County, a group of beaver ponds on the eastern section of the trail.
San Luis Valley Great Outdoors began work on the trail in 2020. The Great Outdoors Action Team, or GOATs, did trail work but also engineered four bridges designed to last a lifetime. With the help of volunteers, the crews cut 40-foot-long pieces of timber and carried them by hand. The cross beams were cut from lumber at more than six feet long and each weighed more than a hundred pounds.
Mick Daniel, executive director for SLVGO!, said at the opening of the trail, “It’s pretty awesome when plans come to fruition.”
There is no federal land and very little state land in Costilla County, which is nearly 99 percent private land. What public land that does exist is primarily managed by the county. Colorado Open Lands said in a landscape of mostly private land, expansion projects are few and far between.
Doon called the park Costilla County’s “little oasis.”
Shirley Romero-Otero, a local from San Luis who represents the Move Mountains Youth Project, said at the opening of the park in 2022 that the land is part of the “very few open spaces we have in the county, so it’s very valuable to us.”
In addition to recreation benefits for people, the area provides winter range habitat for mule deer and elk, as well as summer habitat for bears and for Canada lynx. Other wildlife species make use of the riparian area and forested hillsides, including Mexican free-tail bats, raptors, beavers, and native songbirds. The stream corridor provides plenty of aquatic and riparian habitat as evidenced by the multiple active beaver ponds. It supports a small brook trout fishery and features excellent breeding habitat for the northern leopard frog, a Tier 1 State Species of Concern.
“This is significant and interesting when I look around this circle that it’s people that don’t live in this community,” said Romero-Otero, “people that are outside of our community that have been the backbone to creating this park, to bringing in the resources. And I say that because as a 30-year veteran teacher, as someone who has organized for four decades across the state and the southwest, it’s hard to come into small communities, if you’re not from here, to try to do the work that needs to be done.”