Since Gov. Jared Polis stood on a cliff in October 2021 and announced Sweetwater Lake as the 43rd state park, the community around the lake has labored to slow the state’s roll toward creating a new state park.
The White River National Forest had acquired 488 acres of private land around the lake a few months earlier, following a “Save the Lake” campaign that included a record $8.5 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and help from The Conservation Fund and the Eagle Valley Land Trust. Atop that cliff, across the lake from raptors’ nests, Polis announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to manage 846 acres of Forest Service land around the lake.
The Sweetwater community — several dozen strong in the Sweetwater Lake Working Group — rallied and urged the state and federal government to keep it chill at Sweetwater. Maybe develop a few primitive campsites and a spot for horse stables and trails into the adjacent Flat Tops Wilderness.
But the 2.3 million-acre White River National Forest — the nation’s busiest with more than 12 million recreational visits a year — warned that the flood of visitors to Sweetwater Lake was coming and improvements were needed to manage the deluge for an area that traditionally sees about 30 people a day. The Sweetwater area is inside the Eagle Holy Cross Ranger District, which counted 5.6 million user days in 2022, with 1.2 million of those visits for warmer-weather activities like hiking, camping, mountain biking and sightseeing.
The nine-site Forest Service campground at Sweetwater Lake averaged 438 nights a year between 2016 and 2023. The campground’s occupancy rate in 2023 was 17% of the 1,764 nights available, the lowest since 2016. A study of historical use at Sweetwater Lake in 2024 showed the area’s campground, lake and equestrian outfitter A.J. Brinks hosts about 31 people a day during the peak season with very little traffic in the winter months.
The community’s response to that was that crowds at the lake would only happen if there was a flurry of new marketing. If Sweetwater Lake became a state park — which the locals have pushed to prevent — it could see visitation like Eagle County’s Sylvan Lake, which counts more than 100,000 visitors a year.
“This is a field of dreams”
In the last five years, visitor traffic around Sweetwater Lake has not moved significantly, said Derrick Wiemer, a Sweetwater resident who grew up in the Eagle River Valley.
“In fact, we are seeing fewer folks up here,” Wiemer said. “I think this is a field of dreams. If you build it and promote it, they will come. If you leave it be and protect it, they will come, just in much smaller numbers.”
The Forest Service wants to build at Sweetwater Lake. After two years of study under the National Environmental Policy Act, the White River National Forest last month released a draft environmental impact statement that outlines support for developing recreational infrastructure to “enhance and provide sustainable management” of the federal lands around Sweetwater Lake.
The draft plan outlines four alternatives, including one that would keep things unchanged: no special use permit for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and “limited operational maintenance” and no new investment by the Forest Service. That means existing buildings — like the existing coffee shop and lodge that the Forest Service closed shortly after acquiring the property — would remain closed, “continue to deteriorate, and eventually be removed for safety purposes,” reads the draft plan for the “no action” alternative.
The alternative the Forest Service supports would issue a 20-year permit to Colorado Parks and Wildlife to manage the site and would attempt to limit traffic to around 250 visitors a day. This alternative would develop a new 4,000-square-foot Sweetwater Lodge with a small store, watercraft rentals, food and a large outdoor deck as the anchor of new development across 189 acres. It would also create two day-use zones and a 20-site campground. Alternative 2 would also develop a zone with up to 12 year-round rustic cabins, an area for horse trailers and overnight equestrian camping with a horseback outfitter facility and trails leading into the Flat Tops Wilderness.
An administrative area would have a water treatment facility as well as a home and bunkhouse for employees. An interpretive area on the lakeshore would use signs and historic buildings to share the history of the area, including its use by Utes. This alternative would also protect the wetlands and cliffs on the southern and western shore where Sweetwater Creek enters the lake.
The Forest Service analysis includes plans to remove nine existing structures after inspectors found asbestos materials, mold and plumbing and electrical issues.
Alternative 2 anticipates a management plan that limits visitation to around 250 visitors a day — but allows for up to daily 479 visitors — with an annual count between 51,999 and 103,997 people coming to stand-up paddle, boat, hike, camp, picnic and ride horses. The Alternative 2 development plan would take 10 years and cost about $45 million, and when fully built out, the Sweetwater operation would employ 32 full-time workers earning $1.9 million. Visitation to the developed Sweetwater area could generate $991,100 in annual regional, state and federal tax revenue under the Alternative 2 scenario, with visitors spending $3.8 million a year.
The third alternative reduces the recreational improvements to provide “a more primitive recreation experience” and would not issue a permit to Colorado Parks and Wildlife with a goal to provide “limited recreation opportunities and preserve the historic recreation uses of the area.”
A fourth alternative would allow for the area’s managers to expand parking and capacities if demand surges.
Adrienne Brink has been guiding horse trips out of Sweetwater Lake since 1984. She’s already lost her restaurant and employee housing, which the Forest Service swiftly closed after it acquired the property, citing a host of safety issues. She’s limping through this year, with, by her count, fewer than 20 visitors a day.
“The ‘flood’ of visitors, it’s more of a ghost town,” she said.
She has spent the past few years working with her Sweetwater neighbors to promote a plan “that would fit the property well, increase public access and not destroy our community or our public lands,” she said.
“The Forest Service led us to believe this would all be possible. Now it appears it was a deception from the beginning,” Brink said. “What the state has is outright development and will destroy the resource and our community forever. So much for only developing new state parks in areas where the community approves it.”
Raptors nests and emergency egress
The Forest Service collected 263 comments on its analysis in 2024, which included open house events in Glenwood Springs and Gypsum. The agency analyzed the direct and indirect consequences of each alternative in relation to water, plants, wildlife, history, recreation, soils, wetlands, wilderness and more.
The Sweetwater community held protests at open houses with the Forest Service on Wednesday in Glenwood Springs and Thursday in Gypsum. Their primary concerns revolve around safety — with only one, 12-mile road in and out of Sweetwater. The group argues the draft review by the Forest Service falls short of addressing emergency plans for a wildfire in the area.
“Absent an analysis of these public safety risks, the DEIS appears legally insufficient and should be unapprovable,” reads a statement from the Sweetwater Working Group for The Colorado Sun.
Another issue for the community concerns seasonal closures to accommodate raptors that nest around the lake. The Sweetwater residents wonder if the Forest Service adequately studied the impacts on those peregrine falcons and bald eagles over a decade of construction. They point to Colorado Parks and Wildlife plans to create six-month visitor buffers a half-mile around falcon and golden eagle nests at the new Fishers Peak State Park.
“This raises an obvious question: Why are raptors there afforded substantially greater protection than those at Sweetwater Lake?” local resident Ken Wright asked.
(The Forest Service in 2022 issued a five-year restriction on entering a designated raptor protection area from Feb. 1 through Aug. 15. It also prohibited climbing, motorized boating or entering the sacred Ute Cave above the lake. The agency, in its draft analysis, said Alternative 2 would allow “greater enforcement” and “improved security” for the raptors compared with the no-action alternative or Alternative 3.)
The statement from the Sweetwater residents says the draft environmental review contains “significant errors and omissions” and calls for the agency to fix the issues before starting another 90-day comment period. The group has launched an online petition outlining its issues and seeks support to “stop the unsafe Sweetwater Lake State Park plan.”
“All we want is for the Forest Service to hear us,” said Wiemer, who thinks a local nonprofit could help manage the area. “Our vision, our message has not changed in the last five years. Yes, this Forest Service land is beautiful and it should be open to the public. … It’s truly such a wonderful place to be. We are telling everyone to enjoy it now because once the state takes over, it’s all going to change.”