Poudre Canyon

The Poudre Canyon is a narrow verdant canyon, approximately 40 miles (64 km) long, on the upper Cache la Poudre River (called the "Poudre" for short, which locals pronounce as "Pooder") in Larimer County, Colorado in the United States. The canyon is a glacier-formed valley through the foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains northwest of Fort Collins.

Description

The canyon begins in northern

Canyon Lakes Ranger District of the Roosevelt National Forest

, which is headquartered in nearby Fort Collins.

The flanks of the canyon wall are gently sloping and forested along most of its length, with the exception of several "narrows", at which the river has carved through recent formations leaving behind large glacial debris. The canyon is inhabited along most of its length downstream from

Pingree Park, which is named for George Pingree, an early settler in the canyon in the 19th century. Near Pingree Park is Sky Ranch Lutheran Camp, a summer camp affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

.

The national forest in the vicinity of the canyon is laced with numerous trails that follow side gulches into the surrounding mountains. The trails serve double seasonal duty, as hiking trails in the summer and as

Colorado River

in Rocky Mountain National Park.

The most popular species for fishing in the river are various species of trout which are stocked in the river annually by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The United States Forest Service maintains a series of picnic areas and campgrounds along the river, including one campground facility named for local historian Ansel Watrous, whose 1911 history of the area is the standard early reference about the canyon itself.

The canyon was inhabited by

Colorado Gold Rush). In the early 1880s, the canyon was surveyed for a railroad by archrivals, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad

, with the intention of completing a transcontinental line through the Rockies. The canyon was never the site of a railroad, however, during the 1920s a road was constructed through the narrows.

40°41′53″N 105°37′24″W / 40.69804°N 105.62333°W / 40.69804; -105.62333