The High Line Canal Turns Ten in Cherry Hills Village, Right as Quincy Farm Wakes Up

What does it mean when the oldest part of your daily walk and the newest part of it sit less than a quarter mile apart on the same trail?

That is the situation on the High Line Canal this year as it runs through Cherry Hills Village, the 3.8-mile stretch between Belleview Avenue and Hampden Avenue that most residents know simply as "the canal." The crusher-fine surface under your feet has been there since 2016 and is showing every one of those ten years. Meanwhile, Quincy Farm, the historic property the trail runs straight through, just finished a renovation that took roughly as long to plan as the trail surface has been wearing down. Both stories are true on the same half-day walk, which is not something you'll find in a search result written from three states away.

A Surface Ten Years Older Than It Looks

The soft-surface trail through Cherry Hills Village spans Miles 33 through 36.5 of the Canal, with a midpoint marker at Mile 35.5 and four parks along the way: Three Pond Park, Dahlia Hollow Park, Quincy Farm, and Blackmer Common. The city's own grant application to Arapahoe County Open Spaces, filed in August 2024, laid out the problem plainly: the existing surface went in back in 2016, and a decade of foot, paw, hoof, and bike traffic has worn it down to bare dirt in the low spots. Without anything binding the surface together there, those sections turn to mud and ruts, and Public Works crews have been going out with a skid steer to smooth things over as a stopgap.

The fix is a 2-inch layer of new crusher fine material across the full 3.8-mile section, and it comes with a deadline attached to the funding. Projects under the pilot program covering this work have to be finished by December 31, 2026, which means the resurfacing you may already be noticing signs of should be wrapped by the end of this year. If your usual loop has felt rougher than it used to, that is not in your head. It is a decade of use finally catching up with the surface, and the city is racing a calendar year to fix it.

The Farm That Reopened While the Trail Was Wearing Out

Here is where the timing gets interesting. Quincy Farm, the 17.5-acre property that straddles the canal near Mile 34, was gifted to the city by its former owner, Catherine "Cat" Anderson, upon her death in 2016, the same year the trail surface you're walking on today was installed. For years afterward, the farm sat mostly closed to the public while the city and a local nonprofit called Cherry Hills Land Preserve worked out what to do with it.

That work has visibly paid off this year. The farm's Big Barn, a 1930s structure central to the property, finished its rehabilitation in 2025. A pond next to the canal that had gone shallow and sediment-choked over the decades got dredged in fall 2025 and replanted in spring 2026, funded in part by a $241,000 grant from Arapahoe County Open Space. And this summer, the city replaced the pedestrian bridge connecting Quincy Farm to the canal trail, rebuilding it to match the character of the original wooden footbridge rather than swapping in something generic. If you crossed that bridge in July, you crossed a brand new structure built to look like the one it replaced.

Cherry Hills Land Preserve, the nonprofit that has run the farm's day-to-day programming since 2021, put it simply on its own site: "It is our passion and purpose that unite us." In 2025 alone, that mission translated into 27 educational programs and 1,620 visitors to a property that most Village residents had never set foot on a few years earlier.

Where the Traffic Actually Goes

The same 2024 grant application that flagged the worn-out trail surface also included a number worth sitting with. According to the city's most recent count at the time, Mile 34, the segment running past Quincy Farm, saw 177,281 users, nearly double the 97,528 who passed through Mile 36 further north. That gap is not random. It tracks almost exactly with where the investment has landed this year: the new bridge, the pond project, and the barn renovation are all clustered around the busiest quarter mile of trail in the entire Village stretch, not spread evenly across all 3.8 miles. If you've noticed construction activity concentrated near Quincy Farm rather than up by Hampden, that's not favoritism. That's the city following its own usage data.

What Changed on the Canal This Year

For residents keeping a mental list, here's what's different about walking, running, or riding this stretch in 2026 compared to a year ago:

• A new pedestrian bridge at Quincy Farm, completed this summer, rebuilt to match the historic wooden footbridge it replaced
• The Quincy Farm pond, dredged in fall 2025 and replanted in spring 2026 after decades of sediment buildup
• An irrigation line extension north of Belleview Avenue, planned for completion later this year, meant to support new tree plantings along the canal in partnership with the High Line Canal Conservancy
• A full resurfacing of the 3.8-mile trail through the Village, required to finish by December 31, 2026
• The Big Barn at Quincy Farm, finished in 2025 and now hosting the programming that brought over 1,600 visitors to the farm last year

None of these were single announcements. They add up to a stretch of canal that looks the same from a distance but is meaningfully different up close than it was even eighteen months ago.

The Barn Party, and the Rest of September

If you want to see the renovated Big Barn in use rather than just walk past it, Quincy Farm's annual Barn Party is set for Friday, September 18, 2026, with live music, barbecue, and cocktails on the farm grounds. It is the kind of event that only makes sense once you know the barn itself was closed for restoration as recently as 2024, with trenching for electrical and water lines completed that October ahead of the interior work. A gathering like this on the property would not have been possible two years ago.

Worth remembering if you plan to walk over: dogs are not permitted anywhere on Quincy Farm, even though they're welcome on the canal trail itself, and there is only one accessible parking space on site, so most visitors arrive on foot or by bike via the trail or the Quincy Avenue bike path.

Coffee at the North End

For the stretch of canal closer to Hampden Avenue, there's a new reason to start or end your walk there. Lavender Coffee Boutique opened its second location at 1400 E. Hampden Ave in February 2026, on the northern edge of the Village, open daily from 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. It sits close enough to the canal's northern boundary that it has become part of the morning routine for residents already walking or running that segment before the rest of the day starts.

The Same Trail, Two Different Clocks

What makes this year on the canal worth paying attention to isn't any single project. It's that the same 3.8-mile stretch is running on two different clocks at once. The surface under your feet is aging out of a ten-year lifespan and racing a December deadline to get fixed. Two hundred yards away, a farm that sat dormant for most of that same decade just finished coming back to life, bridge and barn and pond together, almost all of it landing in this same calendar year. Residents who've walked this trail for years are seeing both processes finish at the same time, which is not something that happens twice.

Whitney Cain has spent years working in and around Cherry Hills Village, and pays close attention to the kind of changes that don't show up on a listing sheet but shape what daily life here actually feels like. If you're curious about this neighborhood, whether you already call it home or are simply keeping an eye on it, Whitney Cain would welcome the conversation. Let's Connect.