For years, anyone who left Island Grove Regional Park on the Poudre River Trail and pointed their bike northwest made the same turn. The pavement carried them roughly 21 miles to Colorado Highway 392 in Windsor, and that was the end of it. You turned around, rode back, and did it again the following Saturday.

That turnaround point doesn't exist anymore. Larimer County closed out the last piece of a trail-building effort that has been underway for more than four decades, and the route that used to stop in Windsor now keeps going, tracing the Cache la Poudre River another 24 miles or so through Timnath and Fort Collins to Bellvue. If you've ridden out of Island Grove more than a handful of times, you already sense how much bigger this makes your options. If you haven't been out there since last summer, the trail you remember is not the trail that's there now.

Twenty-One Miles Became Forty-Five

The gap that finally closed sat between Timnath and Windsor, and it was the last unfinished link in a trail corridor Larimer County has been assembling since the 1980s. The county's official trail page confirms the segment was scheduled to wrap in spring 2026, and Northern Colorado agencies marked the occasion with a public celebration called Connecting Communities on June 13, 2026, at Timnath Community Park. The finished link includes a 10-foot-wide concrete path and a bridge over the Greeley #2 Canal, built by Connell Resources and paid for with roughly $2 million in funding from Great Outdoors Colorado and the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Larimer County puts the total continuous distance from Bellvue to Greeley at 45 miles. Trail-tracking apps like AllTrails list the point-to-point route closer to 42.2 miles, which is a reminder that trail mileage depends on where you start measuring, not that anyone changed the plan. Either number describes the same thing: a paved trail that used to end abruptly in Windsor now runs, without interruption, from the west side of Fort Collins all the way to the park where the Greeley Stampede has been held since 1922.

What Actually Changes If You're Riding It

Island Grove Regional Park is the reason this matters so directly for Greeley. The trail's southern terminus sits inside the park's 145 acres, the same grounds that have hosted the Stampede and the Greeley Blues Jam for generations, and that terminus hasn't moved. What's different is what happens after you leave it. A ride that used to top out in Windsor's River Bluffs Open Space now continues through Timnath, up through Fort Collins, and ends at Bellvue, where the trail meets the foothills instead of a parking lot.

The practical details haven't changed. The trail is open sunrise to sunset in the older Greeley-to-Windsor stretch and year-round on the newer sections, dogs are welcome on leash, and no permits or fees are required anywhere along the corridor. Camping and overnight lodging remain prohibited the entire length, since the trail runs through protected municipal greenways rather than backcountry.

For a Greeley resident planning a longer ride, the new geography looks roughly like this:

• Island Grove Regional Park (Greeley) to River Bluffs Open Space (Windsor)
• River Bluffs Open Space through Timnath, including the newly finished canal bridge segment
• Timnath into Fort Collins along the established riverside path
• Fort Collins to Bellvue, the trail's new northwest endpoint

That's a full day's ride for most people, and until this spring it simply wasn't possible to do it without leaving the trail.

The Land Next Door Isn't a Trail Yet

While the county was finishing the connection north of town, the City of Greeley was working on something on the other side of the river. Arroyos del Sol is a 978-acre natural area between Greeley and Windsor, sitting on bluffs that rise more than 100 feet above the Poudre River valley with views of the Rockies and the northern Front Range. The property was known as the Shurview property until residents voted to rename it in 2024, choosing a name that means "sun stream" in Spanish, a nod to the steep, water-carved channels that cut through the site.

The acquisition was a joint effort between the City of Greeley, the Trust for Public Land, and Great Outdoors Colorado, and according to Speak Up Greeley, the city's own public engagement site, it doubles the amount of protected natural land in Greeley. That's the part most residents haven't caught up to yet: this isn't a park addition or a trailhead upgrade, it's close to a thousand acres that didn't have any public recreation status a few years ago and now does.

Here's what's actually settled about Arroyos del Sol and what isn't:

Confirmed: the 978-acre footprint, its location between Greeley and Windsor along the river bluffs, and joint ownership between the city, Trust for Public Land, and GOCO.

Not yet decided: where the actual trails will go, what kind of access points and parking will exist, and whether mountain biking will be permitted alongside walking and birdwatching, all of which the city has said will come from continued community input.

The Trust for Public Land's senior project manager, Wade Shelton, said the goal is to "ensure that Arroyos del Sol flourishes as a publicly owned recreation destination," and the organization has already flagged that future spur trails are planned to connect the site directly into the Poudre River Trail corridor. Right now, though, there's no trailhead sign, no marked path, and no parking lot. If you walk it this year, you're walking raw bluff and prairie before any of that gets built.

One Stretch Worth Seeing Before It Changes

There's a third piece of this that most people driving past 83rd Avenue don't know about yet. The section of the Poudre Trail known as the Narrows, part of Signature Bluffs Natural Area east of 83rd Avenue, runs between sandstone bluffs on one side and the river on the other. It's one of the most photographed stretches of the entire corridor, and it's also one of the most fragile. The city has been studying erosion along that bench since 2019, and construction is scheduled to begin in late 2026 to widen the trail and add a retaining wall on the river side to stop it from washing out. The trail will stay in its current alignment, but this section will close for the duration of the work, and the city has not yet announced exact dates.

Why This Is the Season to See It

Put those three pieces together and you get a corridor that is not sitting still. The Bellvue-to-Greeley connection is open for the first time in the trail's history. Arroyos del Sol exists as protected land but has no built infrastructure at all. The Narrows, one of the corridor's signature stretches, is scheduled to close for construction later this year. That specific combination, a longer trail than ever before, a blank 978-acre canvas next to it, and a scenic section about to disappear behind construction fencing, is not going to exist again. By next summer, Arroyos del Sol will likely have its first marked trails, and the Narrows may be closed or already rebuilt. Whatever version of this corridor you experience over the next few months is a version that won't last.

If you've lived in Greeley long enough to remember when the trail just stopped in Windsor, this is worth getting out to see for yourself. And if you're the kind of person who tracks what's happening to land near the river because you're weighing a move closer to it, Robert Crow keeps closer tabs on this corridor and the neighborhoods around it than most people do. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's changing, or if you're already thinking about buying or selling near the Poudre, ask about a free home valuation and tailored marketing plan.