Purgatoire Watershed Partnership

06/16/2026

The Trinidad Lake - U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is hiring!

We have one available intern position open! If you are interested in a field-going position that benefits wildlife, pollinators, gives interpretive programs, meets professionals in your field, and joins a rockstar team, please email or send us a message here and we can tell you more! You do NOT need to be a current student, although most participants are. Funding potentially available through November 2026.

06/10/2026

Fish, fish and more fish! 🐟 🐠 🎣 What a blast we had out at Central Park Lake today with 92 community members of all ages for our collaborative multi-partner Kids Fishing 101 event! We kicked things off with attendees rotating through three different education stations that included learning to cast, fish biology & fishing ethics, and CPR - how to best Catch, take a Photo, and Release your fish! Then our fishing enthusiasts headed to the lake to try their hand at catching the real thing. The fish had quite the wide variety of preference for our different bait options but everyone had fun and lots of fish were caught (and released:) Multiple fishing stewards took it upon themselves to also clean up some leftover twine and other items and left the lake even cleaner than they found it - thank you! Plus a huge shoutout to the City of Trinidad Colorado for prepping the site for maximum enjoyment! And we mixed in pizza lunch and cold drinks in between for a great summer day of fishing! Thank you thank you to all who came out for the fun!! And thank you so much to all of our other collaborative partners on this event including Trinidad Lake - U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Colorado Trout Unlimited, Las Animas County, Eagle Claw, Bass Pro Shops, Fishers Peak Outfitters, LLC, National Recreation Foundation, Bar NI Ranch Community Fund, The Youth Club of Trinidad, Inc., Student Conservation Association, and River Corps/River Science! ❤️

06/06/2026

What a super fun morning out on the Purgatoire River today for our collaborative Purgatoire Watershed Partnership & Trinidad Trails Alliance & City of Trinidad Colorado event celebrating National Trails Day, National Black Bears Day, National Prairie Day, and of course, National Applesauce Cake Day all in one great outdoor stewardship event! ❤️ Today 29 enthusiastic community stewards cleaned up 27 bags of trash out of our river and Riverwalk as part of our PWP Bags & Brews 'Bears, Trails, Prairie & Applesauce Cake' River Cleanup, AND filled another 20 trash bags with invasive species removed from along the Blue Heron Trail in the Boulevard Addition Nature Park led by TTA!! So a total of 47 bags worth of cleaning up our river and trails and community! A huge thank you to all!!!

Also a big shoutout to Brique Rd Bakery for providing us with delicious apple spice cupcakes - and Jenn & Donna of TTA for the yummy gluten free applesauce cake - to kick off the morning! And Dina Lujan and the great restaurants at The Marketplace for such a welcoming post-event hangout, and the City of Trinidad for providing cleanup supplies! Another great day outdoors in the watershed:)

PS - We also strongly encourage folks to go take a drive east of Trinidad and go explore our beautiful prairie grasslands this weekend or week in honor of National Prairie Day! It is so beautiful and much to explore in the eastern half of our watershed! Get out there!

05/20/2026

What a great day celebrating kids and water at the 2026 Trinidad Water Festival! 🥳 So much fun educating 115 attendees about water and wildlife at our 'Bears of the Purgatoire River' station!!! 🐻 🎨🏀 So when we heard it was going to be 36 degrees at 9 AM on festival day, we did a bit of a pivot and decided to build a 'Bear Den' to try and keep out the cold and make a fun educational space that could also serve as a warming shelter 🔥 It turned out to be a great space to learn all about our local black bears, play a fun game called Bear Ball led by our River Corps Member Eli, and have everyone join in in drawing their vision of our local Purgatoire Bears, where one or more of these designs will be selected to use on posters, magnets, and other outreach tools as part of our upcoming Bears of the Purgatoire River community education campaign! We learned that our local kids already know a lot about our local bears through first hand sightings 🐻 AND that our local kids are all amazing artists! Thanks to all attendees to our station (both scheduled and drop ins!), and a huge shout out to all of the sponsors, supporters, and hard-working on the ground organizers and TSC Staff for making this event possible and amazing every year! You are the best! ❤️

05/16/2026

Did you know that a baby goat is also called a 'kid'??? What a fun day out on the farm for our PWP & TYC 2026 Kids Outdoor Education & Ag Day! 🐐 ❤️ Our 13 enthusiastic adventurers visited Yoder Family Farms today and got to give a goat a hug, provide lots of goat ear scratches, and watch all of the antics of the new baby goats! Plus learn all about making goat cheese, what goats eat, and the impacts of drought! Oh and make friends with the local adorable pup:) 🐕 They also gave us yummy goat cheese 🧀 samples to try, and then we headed over to the main on-site store to buy some goodies to take home to our families! Yum! Another great day outdoors in the Purgatoire Watershed:) Thank you Yoder Family Farms! ❤️ 🐐

01/03/2026

What a fun and sunny 🌞 morning out on the Purgatoire River! Thanks to 17 of your amazing human community members plus two pupsters, 32 bags of trash were cleaned out of the river and along the Trinidad Riverwalk today! We kicked off the morning with yummy donuts from the new Trinidad Dunkin Donuts location 🍩, and sharing what we are grateful for plus inspirational ideas for the year ahead! Then we dove into high gear cleaning up an assortment of trash along the river, including a lot of fast food containers/related trash. Then it was off to the The Marketplace for celebratory food and hydration! 🥳 🎉 🪅 Thank you SO MUCH to these amazing river stewards who came out on a glorious Saturday to clean up our river and community! What a way to kick off 2026!!! 👏 ❤️ 🏆 And an extra shout out to Sammie and his truck 🛻 for making cleanup possible!

12/31/2025

What a super fun kids winter outdoor adventure! As part of our joint PWP-TYC Kids Outdoors Winter Adventure Series, we left The Youth Club of Trinidad, Inc. yesterday morning in search of snow and adventure! As you may know, things have been very dry in the watershed lately, and we knew it might be a tough quest! But these 16 adventurers were not deterred, and we headed straight up to the high country of our shared sister watershed (Purgatoire & Cucharas) San Isabel Forest to find some of the wonderful white stuff! ❄️ And we were not disappointed! Did you know all of the adventures you can have, just by leaving the pavement and heading down a gravel road? All we had to do was head up to Cuchara Pass, hang a right onto the gravel road heading to Cordova Pass, and there you go! We quickly entered a winter wonderland in the forest, and arrived at Cordova Pass where a magical combination of snow + sunshine + no wind (whaaaa?) greeted us. Between eating lunch with curious jays 🐦 looking over our shoulders, to having a super fun snowball fight, to building a snow fort, to going on a snowy walkabout investigating wildlife tracks - we had a blast! Quotes of the day included "Please please stop the van now so we can jump out and get in that big pile of snow" (at the first sight of snow) to "I love snow!" ❤️ ❄️ Plus we of course had to stop at Charlie's in La Veta for gigantic scoops of delicious ice cream🍦on the way home! And an ongoing game of I Spy conducted throughout the day resulted in us spotting horses, cows, a hawk, mountains, cool trees, cool plants popping out of the snow, deer, squirrels, two lakes with some ice on them, and jays and all kinds of wildlife tracks! A perfect day playing outside in winter! And we are all rooting for more of the white stuff on the way!

Wishing you all a very happy and peaceful new year in 2026, and lots and lots of snow!!! ❤️ 💙 💜 ❄️ 🏔 🌨 ☃️

12/24/2025

A super big shout out to Mile High Youth Corps for all of the amazing on-the-ground stewardship work around the Purgatoire Watershed in 2025! As well as a huge shout out to Great Outdoors Colorado - GOCO for making it possible! These enthusiastic young adults first worked a hitch at the Wormhole Trail System in Trinidad on June 25-July 2, accomplishing 4,828 feet of trail maintained/improved plus 11 acres of forest health/fuels mitigation work! You may have noticed the free firewood at the trailhead around that time! Then they headed to our upper forested watershed in North Lake State Wildlife Area & the USFS San Isabel National Forest on a July 9-16 hitch, accomplishing 10 acres of forest habitat restoration/fuels mitigation work, plus significantly improving safety, fire breaks, and sight lines along the Purgatoire Campground access road! These hard working young adults are AMAZING! We can't thank you all enough for all of the critical work you accomplished on behalf of our river, watershed, and local communities this year! ❤️ And of course it wouldn't have been possible without a ton of coordination and collaboration with other local partners and their amazing staff including Trinidad Trails Alliance, City of Trinidad Colorado, North Lake State Wildlife Area, San Isabel National Forest, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and more! Thanks for an epic 2025! ❤️ 🦌 🌳🌲🚲🚶‍♀️⛰️🥾 🐦🌲

PS - We will be working with partners to manage the remaining brush piles along the Purgatoire Campground access road this winter - thank you for your patience!