Walk the High Line Canal between Belleview and Hampden this month and you will notice new gravel underfoot, a rebuilt footbridge where the old one used to sag, and a barn with its lights on for the first time in years. None of that was there two summers ago. The land itself has been sitting in the same spot the whole time.
That gap between "the land existed" and "the land was usable" is the actual story here, and it explains why Quincy Farm feels like new news in 2026 even though the city has owned it since 2015.
The Quarter Of The Village Nobody Could Get Into
Quincy Farm is 17.5 acres tucked into the middle of Cherry Hills Village, straddling both sides of the canal near Quincy Avenue. That single property makes up roughly a quarter of all the public open space and parkland the city has. For a village built almost entirely on large private lots, that is an unusual concentration of shared ground in one place.
The farm came to the city as a gift from Catherine "Cat" Anderson, who donated the property upon her death in 2015 and placed it under a conservation easement administered by Colorado Open Lands, permanently protecting the pastures, the century-old trees, and the two structures on the National Register of Historic Places: an 1898 farmhouse built by the Hopkins family and a 1934 barn built when Myron Blackmer owned the land.
A gift with that many legal and historic strings attached does not turn into a public amenity overnight. Cherry Hills Land Preserve, the local nonprofit founded in 2005 to work on conservation issues in the village, did not begin actively partnering with the city to revitalize the property until late 2021, six years after the donation. For most of that gap, Quincy Farm existed on paper as a community asset and in practice as a fenced pasture most residents drove past without a second look.
What Actually Landed In The Same Window
The reason this stretch of the canal feels different right now is that several separate projects, each with its own funding source and timeline, converged in roughly the same eighteen-month window.
| Project | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Big Barn renovation | Completed 2025 | Stabilized the 1934 barn and turned it into a small gathering space while preserving its historic elements |
| Quincy Farm pond | Dredging finished fall 2025, planting finished spring 2026 | The 1930s irrigation pond had filled with sediment and gone shallow; dredging made it smaller and deeper for better wildlife habitat |
| Pedestrian bridge | Completed summer 2026 | Cherry Hills Village replaced the wooden footbridge connecting the farm to the canal in a style consistent with the original |
| Canal trail resurfacing | Underway, required by December 31, 2026 | A full 2-inch layer of crusher fine material across the entire 3.8-mile city stretch, from Belleview Avenue to Hampden Avenue |
| Irrigation line and tree planting | Ongoing through 2026 | The city is extending its irrigation line north of Belleview Avenue and planting additional trees along the canal with the High Line Canal Conservancy |
No single agency planned this as one campaign. The barn renovation, the pond work, and the bridge replacement moved through the city's partnership with Cherry Hills Land Preserve, while the trail resurfacing is funded through a separate pilot grant program administered with Arapahoe County Open Spaces. They just happened to land at the same time, which is why the corridor reads as transformed rather than incrementally improved.
Why None Of This Moved Fast
The pace makes more sense once you see what the city was working around. When Quincy Farm's nature trail was built on the west side of the property, the work had to be split into two phases specifically because great horned owls have been known to nest in a box in the northwest corner of the farm along Quincy Avenue. Phase one, which cut across the bluegrass lawn into the pastures, was completed in March 2024. Phase two, the loop crossing the northwest corner, was deliberately held until after nesting season ended, and it will continue to observe seasonal closures going forward.
That is not a bureaucratic delay. It is the same conservation easement logic that protected the property in the first place showing up in how the trail gets built, one owl nesting cycle at a time.
What You Can Actually Do There Now
The programming has caught up to the physical work faster than you might expect. In 2025 alone, Cherry Hills Land Preserve ran 27 educational programs at the farm that brought in 1,620 visitors, a number worth sitting with given that the Village Crier newsletter goes out to roughly 2,100 households total. That is close to one program visit for every household in the city in a single year.
What's actually on the calendar there now includes:
- Morning bird walks with Denver Audubon, led by longtime volunteer Barbara Masoner, searching the tree canopy and the pond for whoever is around that day
- Young at Art workshops led by Julie Bennett, Cherry Hills Village Elementary's art teacher, using natural materials collected on the property
- A flower arranging workshop inside the renovated Big Barn with floral designer Cindy Overhardt
- Story time and a kids' art show tied to the annual Barn Party fundraiser, which also features live raptor presentations from HawkQuest and a display in the barn stalls curated with the city's Art Commission
Dogs are not permitted on the property and parking is limited to a single accessible spot, so most people arrive on foot or by bike off the canal itself, which is worth knowing before you plan a visit.
The Trail Itself Needed The Same Attention
The farm gets the headlines, but the canal surface underneath all of this was falling apart on its own timeline. The existing crusher fine surface through Cherry Hills Village was installed in 2016, and in the years since it wore thin enough that Parks staff were regularly sending a skid steer out to smooth ruts that kept reappearing in low spots. The volume of use is part of why: at the most recent count by the High Line Canal Conservancy, mile 34 alone saw 177,281 users in a year, with 97,528 more at mile 36.
That is a lot of traffic for a segment that represents a small slice of the canal's 71 total miles, and it is why the resurfacing project called for nearly 2,340 tons of crusher fine material across the full 3.8-mile stretch rather than patching the worst spots. The work is required to finish by the end of this year under the terms of the grant funding it.
What's Still Coming
A few pieces of this are not finished yet. The trail resurfacing across the city's canal segment carries a completion deadline of December 31, 2026, so residents walking that stretch this fall may still see equipment out. And the irrigation extension and tree planting north of Belleview Avenue is an ongoing partnership between the city and the High Line Canal Conservancy that will keep adding tree cover along the corridor through the rest of the year.
None of these are dramatic on their own. Together, they are the reason a property that sat quietly behind a conservation easement for most of the last decade now has a working barn, a rebuilt bridge, a healthier pond, and a trail surface built to handle the traffic it actually gets. If you have lived in Cherry Hills Village through the quieter years of Quincy Farm, this is the first stretch where the property has looked like what it was always meant to be.
If you're weighing a move in or around Cherry Hills Village and want a clearer read on how a neighborhood like this actually lives day to day, Gregory Ramsey is a good person to talk to. Let's Connect.
