My husband and I were driving to the Denver International Airport to pick up our daughter, who was flying home from a business trip, and we decided to leave our home a few hours earlier to make a side visit to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge, which is located on the Colorado Great Plains in Commerce City, about 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Denver, Colorado.
We began our visit at The Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center, located at the refuge entrance. It is open Wednesdays through Sundays, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. (closed on federal holidays.)
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is one of the largest urban refuges in the country. It is a 15,000-acre expanse of prairie and home to over 330 species of wildlife, including bald eagles, bison, black-footed ferrets, deer, coyotes, burrowing owls, and prairie dogs.
There are many exhibits inside the visitor center:
According to historical information on the Wildlife Refuge's website:"Prior to becoming a Refuge, the Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Ute followed large herds of bison and lived off the land. Later, as settlers moved west to start a new life, they began growing crops and grazing cattle.Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army transformed the area into a chemical weapons manufacturing facility called the Rocky Mountain Arsenal to support World War II. As production declined at war's end, a portion of the idle facilities were leased to Shell Chemical Company for the production of agricultural chemicals. The Arsenal was later used for Cold-War weapons production and demilitarization."
"The Arsenal is one of the most studied environmental restoration sites in the country. Following an extensive site evaluation in the early 1980s, the Army and Shell began a comprehensive environmental cleanup under the oversight of federal, state, and local regulatory agencies. Soon after, a roost of bald eagles was discovered, prompting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to become involved in managing wildlife at the site. The discovery also led Congress to designate the site as a national wildlife refuge in 1992."
About two-thirds of the refuge consists of mixed-grass and shortgrass prairie, while the remainder is a mix of forest, shrubland, and lakes, streams, and riparian areas.
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge is free to visit, and visitors can enjoy 20 miles of hiking trails, bicycling, fishing (with a fishing license--catch and release), archery, photography, and nature programs.
Sixteen American bison were brought from the National Bison Range in Montana to an enclosed 1,400-acre (5.7 km) section of the refuge in March 2007 as part of the USFWS Pilot Bison Project. The number of bison reached 87 in 2013, forcing the USFWS to reduce the herd to just 60 animals because the limited acreage could not support that many. USFWS officials said that in a few years, they would expand the bison acreage to 12,000 acres (49 km), to allow the herd to expand to an anticipated 210 animals.
To see the bison, we entered a one-way 11-mile self-guided auto Wildlife Drive that took approximately 1 hour to complete.
I did not think we would see many bison because we were driving during the middle of the day, and wildlife is usually most active in the early morning or at dusk, but we did see some!
You can see that this resting bison is beginning to shed its winter fur.
We saw many active prairie dogs on our drive.
In 2015, America’s most endangered mammal, the black-footed ferret, was reintroduced to the Refuge. If you click on this link, you can read how this American native ferret almost became totally extinct. They are nocturnal and hard to spot, but there is a ferret enclosure at the Refuge Visitor Center where some can be observed.
I loved this quote by President Theodore Roosevelt that was on display in the Refuge Visitor Center:
"Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us."
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge is located at
6550 Gateway Rd, Commerce City, CO 80022-4327
and is open daily from sunrise to sunset, and is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. The Visitor Center is open Wednesdays - Sundays from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. (closed on federal holidays).
Visiting the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge was something I had wanted to do for a long time, and I was happy to have finally seen it!
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