After nine years, Mark Sears still can’t believe they pulled it off. He still gets goosebumps when he thinks about Soapstone Prairie Natural Area. Most anyone would be impressed by the vast landscape of grasslands that roll into shrubby hillsides topped by snow-capped peaks, about 25 miles north of Fort Collins, Colorado. Most anyone would be impressed by the Lindenmeier archeological site that is found there, a national historic landmark which changed the understanding of humankind’s presence in North America. Most anyone would be impressed that bison and endangered black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced to Soapstone Prairie. But Mark Sears isn’t talking about the views, the cultural history, or the wildlife. He gets goosebumps over the real estate deal that conserved the natural area forever.
The residents of Fort Collins, a community of about 170,000, located an hour north of Denver, mean business when it comes to land conservation. They have voted six times since 1992 to tax themselves for open space conservation, education, and recreation. Those sales taxes generate about $13 million a year to support a network of 50 conserved natural areas which are stewarded by over 50 employees. Finding willing land-sellers and negotiating real estate deals is part of the job for Mark Sears, City of Fort Collins Natural Areas Department Program Manager. He is warm and friendly and Soapstone Prairie is one of his favorite subjects.
When the City bought Bobcat Ridge Natural Area in 2003, Sears thought it was a big deal. For a department that had never purchased land outside of the city, it felt big to have 2,600 acres of prime foothills habitat and room for over 10 miles of trail a few miles out of town. But then the possibility of Soapstone surfaced. As Sears sees it, a strong foundation was in place,
Well, first we had to have a Natural Areas program, and it had to have been well funded, and of course both of those happened in 1992.
So the City had the money to buy Soapstone Prairie. “We had 7 million dollars and a couple spare nickels to make the initial purchase” as Sears put it. But funding wasn’t the only concern. The City was just finishing a 10 year plan that shifted the conservation focus to include regional lands in addition to protecting sites within City’s boundaries. So this was literally new territory. Even if Natural Areas had the cost covered, would City Council support the purchase? Sears said,
When we went to Council, although there was certainly some apprehension among several Council members about why would the City buy 12,000 acres of land for seven million dollars, 25 miles north of of town, when the furthest we had acquired anything before was when we purchased 2,6000 acres at Bobcat. But no one said no. They had never been on the site. But somehow they knew it was going to be a very special place and one that we would look back at years later, if we didn’t conserve it ,and kick ourselves. And so there were a few grudging nods, but they did, they said okay! That was huge.
A blessing from City Council and funding were not the only “planets” that needed to align for the City of Fort Collins to acquire Soapstone Prairie Natural Area. Luckily, the idea of large scale landscape conservation was in the air. Years before, The Nature Conservancy had envisioned a conserved corridor from the peaks to the prairies in the Wyoming/Colorado border area. They called it the Laramie Foothills Mountains to Plains Project. In 2003 at a board meeting, the Mountains to Plains Project vision was shared with Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), which “invests a portion of Colorado Lottery proceeds to help preserve and enhance the state’s parks, trails, wildlife, rivers and open spaces.” With that, the idea of conserving a large landscape between Fort Collins, Colorado and Laramie, Wyoming had been planted.
Coincidentally, and maybe not so coincidentally, GOCO had been hearing about the chance of buying Soapstone and Red Mountain and our dilemma of not being able to do both. They had money to give away, and so they created this large [grant] cycle for land conservation that came about just on the heels of our purchase of Soapstone. And so we went to them and said, if we go ahead and purchase this property [Soapstone] in June/July, could we [a Larimer County/City of Fort Collins partnership] use that as match money for the Red Mountain purchase? And GOCO said yes! So we went ahead with the closing. -Mark Sears
That fall, Great Outdoors Colorado was investing $16 million in landscape level conservation. Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins partnered on an audacious grant application for almost all the of the $16 million, using the Soapstone Prairie purchase to match.
Between Larimer County and us, we were bold enough to ask for 11 and a half [million dollars]. And long story short, it became the poster child for that particular grant cycle, and they gave us all 11 and a half million dollars! It accomplished exactly what they were setting out to accomplish, which was a landscape scale land conservation effort in a much even larger landscape, the Laramie Foothills Mountains to Plains effort. With that grant, we conserved over 30,000 acres of land. They [GOCO] were probably as excited as we were, if not more, and I think it is still the largest grant that GOCO has ever granted someone, so that is how monumental that occasion was.
With the purchases of Soapstone and Red Mountain underway, the marketing campaign began. There was a healthy bit of community skepticism about the City using its entire land budget, about the shortgrass prairie scenery, about Soapstone’s distance from town. So the City hired a guide and offered free tours by van for several years. Sears describes the transition visitors experienced,
Once you took someone up to that site, whether they had doubted the purchase prior or not, once they saw the site, they were convinced…. There were really doubters. They just could not see the sanity behind buying that piece of property, but we took one trip up there and they came back devout supporters of that purchase….People had no clue what was up there….Once they saw incredibly beautiful it is, you cannot drive up there and not realize, this is a special place. Because when you are up there, you hardly see anything manmade, it takes on a really unique atmosphere. It is just so unspoiled.
What did all this serendipity bring the community? Soapstone Prairie opened in 2009 and since then it has become a treasured part of the natural areas network. Sears said about 50,000 people visit a year. Soapstone Prairie features 40+ miles of trails for hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding. Sears’ favorites? The rim looking into the “Big Hole” is the ultimate experience (reach it from the Cheyenne Rim Trail), which is quite a haul (6 miles each way), but worth it. He also loves the Towhee Trail (3 mile moderate loop from the North Parking Lot), and the Lindenmeier Overlook (1/4 mile paved trail to National Historic Landmark). If you do visit, take a moment to feel the place, too. As Sears says,
When you are up there, you do feel that you are in a spiritual place, that you really want to show and treat with reverence… You feel like you are in a place that is just like it was pre-settlement. It really does give you goosebumps, and a real special feeling to be up there.
Maybe Mark Sears is feeling the same serendipity, the same force that came together to make the conservation of Soapstone Prairie possible. Or maybe you can say the planets were aligned just right to make the deal come together. In any case, Soapstone Prairie Natural Area seems like it was meant to be, and even visitors find that same sense of peace, or is it serendipity?
