Colorado City parents band together to raise funds and renovate town's only park

Last winter, Misty Sprague began to wonder how much longer she and other Colorado City parents would need to campaign to reserve court time at the community’s only gymnasium. At the time, that had been a constant dilemma: multiple parents vying for limited time so their kids could play inside the gym or kids enrolled in team sports through the parks and recreation department could play some basketball.

“Why don’t we have a gymnasium that’s not at school?” Sprague asked herself. “Why is that not a thing? That’s when I started talking to other people to tell them we need a gym. The other parents were already talking about getting a field.”

Those parents had already been discussing what their options could be to revitalize a field at Colorado City’s only community park, Greenhorn Park. That field, along with a track surrounding it, had been built about 2006 as part of the first two phases in a $750,000 investment from Great Outdoors Colorado to create a multiuse sports park.

The Great Recession in 2008 paused further construction on that park and forced GOCO to pivot to other projects. The funding for the park disappeared and that initial assembly hasn’t resumed in the 17 years since.

“The field was supposed to be our ‘Field of Dreams’,” said Sprague, referencing the 1989 film. “(But) it’s just been an eyesore. It feels like everybody drives by and says, ‘Why don’t they do something about that?’ It makes our community look like we can’t do better.”

Sprague and other Colorado City parents eventually decided they should be part of the solution and banded together in 2021. In January 2022, they officially formed Valley First, a nonprofit that seeks to be a “catalyst for positive change” and anchor “support, empowerment and progress for the communities of Colorado City and Rye.”

The nonprofit’s first priority has been to secure funding to refurbish Greenhorn Park and finish a project that started nearly two decades ago. As of March 21, Valley First had raised $558,000 by collecting 12 grants, a portion of which will be allocated to completing the field that was never finished.

That project would install turf in that area and turn it into a football and soccer field that could also host community events and other activities.

Valley First’s fundraising target is $1.4 million and it’s working to get half of that from a major matching grant so it can complete the rest of its renovation plans, which include a revamp of the park’s playground and the trail system that surrounds the park, among other changes.

Valley First’s fundraising target is $1.4 million and it’s working to get half of that from a major matching grant so it can complete the rest of its renovation plans, which include a revamp of the park’s playground and the trail system that surrounds the park, among other changes.

That’s part of the reason why it has taken so long to generate momentum toward completing the park, Sprague said, and why Valley First is in partnership with the metro district on the Greenhorn Park project. That support helped Sprague stay hopeful after she was denied six times for a grant through GOCO, which fields requests from a deep pool of applicants.

But having had some success with some grant applications, Sprague said she might start to loop in other Colorado City community members and businesses to see if they’d like to pitch into the effort.

Wendy Cutler, a Colorado City resident and mom to Zoey, 12, and Ryla, 8, said she supports the fundraiser. Cutler moved her family to the area nine years ago from Arizona where she said there were parks on every corner. She and her daughters enjoy Greenhorn Park but have noticed its limitations.

The change Cutler is most excited for is the overhauled trail system that should give Zoey, a cross country and track participant “who loves to run," a safer space to do so. The trail runs adjacent to the highway at a certain point and was deemed a safety hazard for people who are walking and running on it. That determination by the Colorado Department of Transportation helped Valley First secure a grant to update it.

Valley First has other upgrades in mind at the park, including the construction of a community center with a gym and indoor pool. That project would start after it completes this initial phase and likely take three to five years to fund, Sprague said.

The nonprofit’s first focus, however, is the completion of a project that started long ago.

“I think this is going to make good improvements to our community,” Sprague said. “I also think it empowers other parents and rural communities by seeing us put in this type of work and know they can start change in their own way.”

For more information on the project and Valley First, visit valley-first.org.

Chieftain reporter Josue Perez can be reached at JHPerez@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @josuepwrites.