Providing all you with a vast selection of high mountain tolerant flowers, plants and trees for your property. We are open all spring, summer and fall from 9 – 5pm all week long. We are glad to help you pick out plants for your property location. Stop by and see our selection or call with questions (970) 349-0252.

Cold Spring Ranch: 190 acres preserved in 2011 with the Trust for Public Land.

View from Baxter Gulch

The trail will continue to be built in stages for the next couple of years with the final stages allowing for volunteer efforts from the community. Ultimately, the trail will provide access to climbing Whetstone Mountain as well as a through trail to Ohio Creek.  A feasibility study has begun to place a campground at the trailhead.

Special thanks should be sent to Jake Jones, Town of Crested Butte Parks & Recreation Director and John Hess, Town of Crested Butte Town Planner who made this trail construction project happen

PLEASE NOTE: The Baxter Gulch Trail is NOT open and will not be for some time due to the multiple-year needs in constructing.

1% for Open Space funded the final needed trail easement to create an environmentally sound and user-friendly trail in 2010 with the Town of Crested Butte.  The Town of Crested Butte and Crested Butte Land Trust also did considerable work in acquiring easements to help make this trail happen.  Thank you to all the private land owners and organizations who have helped bring this amazing amenity to the community!

Kikel preserved acres

Discussions have begun with the Kochevar Trails Coalition with the Crested Butte Land Trust leading the charge to connect the new Lupine Trail on the Kochevar Parcel with the Kikel Parcel with a new trail.  The new trail would link the Lupine Trail through Kikel to meet the Slate River Road near the Gunsight Bridge Parcel.  This new trail would eliminate user needs to hike or bike through the current exit route of the Lupine Trail that runs down a county road and through a considerable amount of gates.  It would also provide a more direct route for connecting with the Gunsight Bridge and Lower Loop trails.  Consideration is being made to make the trail wide enough for adaptive users.

Construction on the new trail will most likely begin in the spring and summer of 2012.

1% for Open Space helped fund the Kochevar Parcel in 2010 with the Town of Crested Butte, the Kikel Parcel in 2006 with the Crested Butte Land Trust, the Gunsight Bridge Parcel with the Crested Butte Land Trust in 2002, and the Lower Loop with the Crested Butte Land Trust in 1998 and 1999.

The Kochevar Trail Coalition is a consortium of non-profits and governmental entities focused on providing open space and trail amenities to the community. The group consists of 1% for Open Space, Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association, Town of Crested Butte Planning Department, Town of Crested Butte Parks and Recreation Department, Town of Crested Butte Town Council, Crested Butte Land Trust, Gunnison County Trails Commission, Gunnison County Land Preservation Board, Elk Mountain Hikers Club, Adaptive Sports of Crested Butte and Gunnison County Commissioners

Our experience with EnergyWise has been AMAZING!  We’ve performed a myriad of energy efficient upgrades and eagerly anticipate our year anniversary to see just how much we’ve been able to reduce our carbon footprint.

One of the best benefits has been the monetary incentives you receive just be being a member of the program.  We literally gleaned hundreds of dollars in energy efficient upgrades.  And, Frank Meadors, the go-to man for the program, is incredibly helpful in navigating all of the additional rebates, grants and incentives that are available on a federal state and utility provider level.

Travel to natural areas is one of the fastest growing sectors in the tourism industry, and ecotourism goes hand in hand with that.  We know there are tourists and consumers who make their travel and purchasing choices based on how businesses are running their business.  Already as a participating member of 1%, you have the potential to directly target this ecotourism market.  As a member of the EnergyWise Business Program, your platform is that much stronger.

Fall and the new year are perfect times to get rolling with a new program. The Energy Wise Business Program is a great way to take action now to reduce your energy bills. Get a free energy evaluation and hands-on assistance with determining the best strategy for your business to make improvements and cut costs. There are many other benefits to the program, see www.resourceefficiency.org/energy-wise-business-program-0 for all the details. Join Energy Wise now and get your $425 Challenge Grant while they still last! Time is running out, so contact Frank Meadors at the Office for Resource Efficiency: 970-641-7682 or frank@resourceefficiency.org.

Also don’t forget your own personal home! Take advantage of the Energy Smart  Double Down rebate special, available through November 30th, 2011! Gunnison County residents can get 40% up to

$400 back for energy improvements, including: furnaces, boilers, water heaters, appliances, insulation, air sealing, doors, windows and more. Find out more info at: http://www.resourceefficiency.org/energysmart-homes. To cash in, contact Bart, Home Energy Advisor at 970-641-7682 or bart@resourceefficiency.org.

This project adds to the over 200 acres protected in the Park since 1997. Part of the 1,800 acre High Elk Corridor preservation project that connects the Maroon Bells-Snowmass and Raggeds Wilderness Areas, Schofield Park serves as the southernmost terminus for the West Maroon Pass Trail.  Schofield Park borders sensitive outdoor research areas utilized by RMBL, as well as National Forest land.

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory’s mission is to advance the deep scientific understanding of nature that promotes informed stewardship of the Earth. Of the approximately 300 field stations in North American, RMBL is one of the largest and oldest. The long-term history of in-depth research, in combination with a relatively pristine location and a compressed growing season especially sensitive to variation in climate, provides unparalleled opportunities to document and understand ecological perturbations of global importance.

RMBL has been involved in conservation in the area of Schofield Park for over 50 years. They collaborated on their first major project with The Nature Conservancy to purchase approximately 1,000 acres, an area now known as the Mexican Cut Preserve. This was TNC’s first project in the state of Colorado and research conducted in the Preserve informed revision of the Clean Air Act, leading to protections for air in the western United States.

“As obtaining permission to work on USFS properties becomes more complex, costly and time-consuming, private inholdings where we can locate experiments and equipment, such as the recently purchased property in Schofield, are becoming an important part of the tools that RMBL uses to facilitate research and education,” commented Executive Director Ian Billick.

With the addition of these 1.89 acres, 1% for Open Space has now helped preserve close to 5,000 acres since its inception in 1997. Through the dedication and participation of over 70 local businesses and their customers, 1% has raised over $1.7 million to preserve open space in Gunnison County.

In 2002 1% for Open Space gave $50,000  to the Crested Butte Land Trust to preserve 120 acres at Gunsight Bridge.  The parcel serves as an important connector between the Lower Loop and BLM land, essentially allowing residents and visitors the opportunity to access wilderness land directly from town.  Now, nine years later, the Gunsight Bridge parcel is becoming even better.

Over 11,000 cubic yards of coal removed.  Set into the ground were 15,450 individual plants of 17 different species. Over 125 pounds of seed mix spread with species such as yarrow, paintbrush, lupine and flax.  Recovering from 40 years of hard mining that ended in 1929.

These are just some of the reclamation numbers of the Slate River wetlands on the Gunsight Bridge parcel. This 120-acre connector from the Lower Loop to BLM land was permanently preserved by the Crested Butte Land Trust (CBLT) in 2003,with a conservation easement held by the Town of Crested Butte.

Tara Tafi, Project Manager from the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety (DRMS), led volunteers through the reclamation site on Saturday, October 22, after a rigorous day of planting willow, wood rose, shrubby cinqufoil and wax currant on the wetland buffer zone of the project area.  The group tiptoes through loose soil and small nuggets of coal, 11,000 wetland plugs and 30 sod patches that dot the recovering wetland like implants for a receding hairline.  Rhizomes from the plugs will spread roots and shoots from nodes underground to propagate more wetland plants.  Blue joint, reed grass, beaked sedge, water sedge, Baltic rush, tufted hairgrass and large leaf avens are all part of the optimistic mix.  Meanwhile, the surviving wetland creeps in, slowly growing over the now exposed topsoil and thin layer of coal.  Tara estimates that in five years, the plants will have won, and the wetland will once again function like the filtering system it is.

Where did the coal come from?

Tara and the DRMS, in partnership with the CBLT and the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition (CCWC), are cleaning up the mining refuse from the second largest coal mine in the Crested Butte region in the late 1800′s.  Duane Vandenbusche, author of The Gunnison Country, writes that Crested Butte father Howard Smith purchased all of Smith Hill in 1879 after turning up the prized high quality anthracite coal.  The Smith Hill Mine began operations in 1882 with a 1,628-foot tramway running from the mine on top of Smith Hill to a mammoth, 80-foot coal breaker.  The only anthracite breaker west of Pennsylvania, it crushed and sized the coal, where the Denver Rio Grand railway then hauled it away.  Standing next to a small and now uncovered stream, Tara says the coal in that spot rose to eye level. Along with the waste, they’ve also unearthed a lot of trash, including shoes and bottles from the era.  One bottle, she reports, reeked with the booze still sloshing inside.

Overview of reclamation area

The Process of Reclamation

Hauling the coal away is cost prohibitive, explains Tara.  The brand of coal in Crested Butte is low sulfur, however, so abandoned coal mines like the Smith Hill Mine are not cursed with acid mine drainage.  When so thickly layered, however, water cannot percolate up to the surface to support plant life.

The task of restoration becomes not to remove all of the coal, but to resore the pre-mining hydrology to the wetlands. Some of the coal remains as a thin veneer over the original ground surface through which places can grow.  Of the 11,000 cubic yards of coal removed from the wetland, 4,000 was blended into the hillside below the Slate River Road.  The rest was wrapped in a geo-grid material to increase its strength and prevent it from sloughing into the wetland and waterway.  Topped by road base, the area will continue to serve as a cattle load for local rancher Curtis Allen.  While the land revegetates itself, the cattle will be directed by fencing to keep them off the delicate terrain.

“The wetlands will begin to grow back in,” explains Tara, “because we have restored the hydrology.  Now the water can percolate up whereas before the coal was damming it.  Now the water can do what it wants, and do it naturally.”

The project found its seed when the DRMS and CBLT worked together on the Peanut Mine reclamation project in 2007, also a Land Trust conserved property. One-hundred percent of the half million dollars for the project came from the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund – a federal fund collected from severance taxes paid by coal mining companies.  The DRMS contracted wetland ecologist Andy Herb of AlpineEco to create the restoration design.  Since this past August Andy and Tara, along witha host of excavators and several days of volunteers from the Crested Butte Community School, Gunnison High School and Western State College, and CCWC have plant by plant and seed by seed been putting the wetland back together.

The Conservation of Gunsight Bridge

Restoring the wetland would never have been possible if it weren’t for the conservation efforts of the land itself by the Crested Butte Land Trust, who received the support of local funders to make the original preservation happen.

Funding the property was the Gunnison Valley Land Preservation Board with funds from Gunnison County, the City of Gunnison, Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte specifically designated to protect open space and agricultural heritage of Gunnison County; Great Outdoors Colorado, using a portion of lottery dollars for the protection of Colorado’s open space; and the Town of Crested Butte with  funds gathered in its 3% Real Estate Transfer Tax, half of which is designated for the preservation of open space outside the town limits.  And finally, 1% for Open Space granted money from customer donations collected by the over 70 participating businesses.  In this way, patrons of any 1% for Open Space business can feel proud to have individually contributed to the preservation, and hence restoration, of this land.

From conservation to restoration, the Gunsight Bridge parcel is one of those shining examples of a variety of organizations, volunteers, donors and community members demonstrating when we receive so much, it is also important to give back.

“The restoration project of Gunsight Bridge meets every conservation value of the Crested Butte Land Trust,” concludes Executive Director Ann Johnston, “It supports historic grazing practices, protects wildlife habitat and provides free recreation for hundreds of people. It really is a fantastic project.”

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