Cherry Creek Reservoir

Cherry Creek State Park sits on the southeastern edge of the metro, surrounding a reservoir held back by one of the region's most consequential pieces of infrastructure. Cherry Creek had flooded Denver repeatedly over the decades. The breaking point came in August of nineteen thirty-three, when the Castlewood Dam upstream collapsed after heavy rain and sent a fifteen-foot wall of water roaring down toward the city.

Congress authorized the Cherry Creek flood control project in nineteen forty-one, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers completed the dam in January of nineteen fifty. The earthen structure stands one hundred forty-one feet tall and stretches fourteen thousand three hundred feet along its crest. Behind it sits an eight-hundred-eighty-acre reservoir that is now shared by powerboats, sailboats, kayakers, paddleboarders, and swimmers who use the sandy swim beach in summer.

The park itself covers roughly three thousand three hundred fifty acres of shortgrass and mixed-grass prairie at about five thousand five hundred feet of elevation, with more than thirty-five miles of multi-use trails winding through rolling hills and cottonwood riparian areas. It consistently draws more than two and a half million visitors a year, making it one of the busiest state parks in Colorado and a genuine working counterpart to all that flood-prevention concrete underneath.