At its April 18 meeting, the Pagosa Springs Town Council discussed different design options for the future 1st Street pedestrian bridge to be constructed over the river connecting sidewalks from the museum to the Malt Shoppe…
— from a story by reporter Clayton Chaney in the Pagosa Springs SUN, April 25, 2024
A proposed pedestrian bridge near the Pagosa Springs History Museum — envisioned as a better way for strolling pedestrians to move between Pagosa’s historic downtown commercial district and the more-automobile-centric ‘East End’ — has been discussed for twenty years. It’s a facet of three primary goals the Town government has been pursuing for many years.
1. A walkable, pedestrian friendly downtown — especially, friendly to tourists. (Friendly also to bicyclists?)
2. An effort to show the East End businesses that the Town government actually does care about them, and is willing to spend tax dollars promoting the East End.
3. An ongoing effort to fulfill the dream of a billionaire developer named David Brown, who passed away in 2013.
A pedestrian bridge at First Street was suggested by the Community Vision Council in 2004, twenty years ago, in a colorful 46-page document purporting to be a ‘conceptual master plan’ for downtown Pagosa Springs.
It was labeled as a “New Footbridge”, on page 30.
The “Community Vision Council” was a small, hand-picked group of local leaders — some ‘movers and shakers’ — assembled by Mr. Brown to help him promote his vision of the entire ‘historical downtown’ as a quaint tourist resort. Mr. Brown understood, in a way many of us did not, I suppose, that the growth of the Pagosa Springs economy depended entirely on making our town feel like a refreshing, but authentic, place to visit for a week or two.
Growth of the economy, being the end goal of any forward-thinking town.
It’s not like pedestrians and bicyclists can’t currently access the East End. The Highway 160 vehicle bridge crosses the San Juan River at First Street, connecting the traditional mixed-use downtown with the commercial-only East End, and it includes a sidewalk on either side of the vehicle lanes. I’ve walked across that bridge sidewalk many times, and even ridden my bike across it.
But not so often lately. As the population of Colorado has increased, so has the vehicle traffic over that Highway 160 bridge… and the sidewalks have felt less safe.
I don’t believe they are actually less safe; they only feel less safe. Those highway bridge sidewalks, however, are likely a great deal safer for a pedestrian than the residential streets downtown that still have no sidewalks at all.
At any rate, the Town government would like to install a pedestrian bridge parallel to the Highway 160 bridge. Maybe soon.
I think this drawing in the 2004 ‘Conceptual Master Plan’, by the architects at Hart Howarton, is kind of fascinating. It shows the future footbridge at First Street.
In this drawing, we are looking due west, from the East End’s Malt Shoppe towards the Pagosa Springs History Museum, with the Highway 160 vehicle bridge on the left and the future footbridge on the right.
The vehicle bridge is apparently a new bridge, because the existing pedestrian sidewalks have disappeared. Not sure how that happened.
Also, we should be looking directly at the Pagosa Springs History Museum, on the far side of the footbridge. But instead we see what looks like a grassy meadow.
Maybe Mr. Brown didn’t approve of the History Museum’s location?
For many years, the East End was the red-headed stepchild at Town Council and Planning Commission meetings, rarely mentioned in discussions about tourism and business support. Recently however, the Town Council and staff have been making as concerted effort to focus attention on the East End, and also on the Pagosa Springs History Museum, located at the corner of First Street and Highway 160. You can read about the expensive plan for improvements to the East End here.
It’s possible the Town has another, related aim — to encourage visitors to walk to the far end of town and maybe visit the History Museum on their way to, or from, the East End? I have a sense that our Town-supported museum doesn’t see as many visitors as it would like to see.
To help get my head wrapped around this story, I visited the site of the future bridge yesterday and snapped few photos.
From the Museum website:
Our season runs from May through September. Open 10:00am to 4:00pm Tuesday through Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday.
The museum is located at 96 Pagosa Street in downtown Pagosa Springs, next to the San Juan River bridge.
We are not supported by any governmental entity and rely on donations and sales from our gift shop to pay for our employees, insurance, supplies, and utilities. We have expanded our gift shop and hope you will enjoy shopping for gifts for yourself, family, and friends.
A few things I noticed while taking these photos. The rusty agricultural equipment (from the 1920s or earlier?) is now stored on the west side of the Museum, next to a large storage container (from 2018?)
All this rusty equipment used to be prominently on display in front of the Museum, visible from Highway 160, making the site look a bit like an historical junk yard (in my humble opinion.)
The front of the Museum is now relatively barren, except for some bright orange fiber optic cable conduit and a new underground concrete pull-box that says “CDOT COMM”. I assume these are related to the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) fiber that will someday run over Wolf Creek Pass.
The future of downtown Pagosa Springs is surprisingly bright and flourishing, to judge from the April 18 meeting of the Pagosa Springs Town Council.
We’ve heard at previous meetings that sales tax revenues are up by around 4% over last year. Almost at the rate of inflation, in other words.
And we heard about the price of a pedestrian bridge that will connect First Street to the Malt Shoppe. Maybe soon…