Colorado Trail CT

The record

Kind

Designated trailDesignated, maintained and published as one trail by a land agency or a trail association

Designation

Colorado Trail Foundation trail, most of it on National Forest System land

Tier

RegionalA long trail of 80 km (50 mi) or more

Listing

First setUSFS public domain for 727 km (95%) and OpenStreetMap (ODbL) for the 38 km the Forest Service does not publish, in 17 named stretches: Waterton Canyon (Denver Water), Chalk Creek, Monarch Pass, near Twin Lakes, near Rico, and the Durango end.

Where

CO (Colorado), United States

Published length

782 km486 mi486 mi published (Colorado Trail Foundation), Denver to Durango. A check value, not measured from the line.

Short name

CT

Record ID

colorado-trailStable: the directory name, never changed

Verification Checked 2026-11-08

Measured

YesThe line was downloaded and measured

Published

782 km486 mi

Measured

765.6 km476 migeodesic, from the line

Difference

−2.1%measured minus published

Parts

1pieces left after joining ends within 100 m

The Forest Service segments plus the OSM relations give 765.6 km in 1 part, 2.1% short of 782 km: USFS 727.2 km (95%) and OSM 38.4 km in 17 short stretches, the largest Chalk Creek 7.8 km, Rico 5.6 km, Waterton Canyon 5.2 km and Monarch Pass 4.7 km. Earlier OSM-only measure was 643.8 km: the two big relations stop at Twin Lakes and Monarch Pass and do not include the Collegiate East between them.

Source and licence

Line in this dataset

line.geojsonThe main line file of the record

Source status

VerifiedThe line was downloaded from the source and measured

Publisher

USDA Forest Service (EDW National Forest System trails), with OpenStreetMap where the Forest Service publishes no segment

Source

https://apps.fs.usda.gov/arcx/rest/services/EDW/EDW_TrailNFSPublish_01/MapServer/0Where to ask for the line: a layer or relation page

Line source

USDA Forest Service (EDW National Forest System trails), with OpenStreetMap where the Forest Service publishes no segment

Format

ArcGIS MapServer layer, queried in three parts: trail_no = '1776' AND trail_name = 'COLORADO' (90 features), trail_name LIKE '%CO.TRAIL%' (36), and the locally named segments matched by shape (50); outSR=4326, f=geojson. OSM relations 19469031, 19467582, 19469030 and 3823497 read through Overpass.

Main line

Main line = the Forest Service segments wherever the layer has them, joined through the OSM relations. Collegiate East (OSM 19467582) is the main route through the Sawatch; Collegiate West (OSM 3823497) is the alternate in alternates.geojson. The USFS segments are named 'COLORADO' (no 1776) east of Monarch Pass and '<place> - CO.TRAIL' or a local trail name (CDNST, SUMMIT, SKYLINE) west of it.How the main line is told apart from alternates, connectors and side trails

Coordinates

USFS stores Web Mercator (ask for outSR=4326); OSM is EPSG:4326What the source stores; published files are longitude/latitude (EPSG:4326)

Licence

US public domain

Credit

USDA Forest Service; © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)The credit line to show, as the source asks

May be passed on

YesThe source's terms allow its line to be passed on

OpenStreetMap only

No

Source checked

2026-11-08

Newer release?

arcgis-query-hash: GET <url>/query with the recorded where clauses (trail_no '1776' named COLORADO, and ' - CO.TRAIL'), hash the answer body and count its rows; fetch again when either changesHow to tell whether the source has a newer release

What the source says

United States federal government work, public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. 105. The National Park Service states: 'Data and content created by government employees within the scope of their employment are not subject to domestic copyright protection under 17 U.S.C. 105.' (https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2311077, read 2026-11-09). Part of the line (about 38 km) is from OpenStreetMap and is ODbL 1.0: © OpenStreetMap contributors (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright).

With the page it was read on. Not legal advice.

OpenStreetMap

Relation

19469031

Note

19469031 Waterton Canyon to Twin Lakes (287.3 km) and 19469030 Durango to Monarch Pass (356.2 km), joined by 19467582 Collegiate East (124.5 km); 3823497 Collegiate West (127.8 km) is the alternate. Downloaded 2026-11-08; release.txt has the versions.

Logo

Logo not found. No logo file found: coloradotrail.org blocks automated fetches (403) and its store shows the triangular CT logo only in product photos. Retried 2026-11-08 with a browser identifier: the site answers HTTP 403 to every request (SiteDistrict WAF), its Instagram hides the profile picture from anonymous clients, and Commons has no file naming the Foundation.