Dolores cleanup to restore trails and reduce wildfire risk

A half-day cleanup in Boggy Draw aimed to do two jobs at once: restore a busy recreation area northwest of Dolores and cut down on the kind of debris and overgrowth that can add to wildfire risk heading into summer.

The San Juan Mountains Association organized the effort for Saturday, May 16, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Volunteers were asked to meet at the Dolores District of the San Juan National Forest, with a vanpool available from the Dolores Public Lands Office. Lunch, snacks and beverages were provided, removing some of the practical hurdles that can keep residents from signing up for a short volunteer shift.

SJMA said the work focused on the Boggy Draw dispersed camping area and nearby trail system. The list of tasks was specific: trail maintenance and mulching, invasive weed removal, litter pick-up and landscaping. Those jobs matter in a place that sees steady use from campers, hikers and riders, especially as warmer weather brings heavier traffic and a greater fire threat to dry public land.

The cleanup also fit into a broader land-management picture in southwest Colorado. The Dolores Ranger District manages 597,373 acres of the San Juan National Forest in Dolores, Montezuma and San Miguel counties, while the Bureau of Land Management’s Tres Rios Field Office oversees more than 600,000 acres of public land and over 2.6 million acres of federal mineral estate across the region. In that landscape, trail work and fuels work are closely linked, because neglected vegetation can become part of the fire load in dense ponderosa pine forests.

Boggy Draw has already been part of that fire-safety equation. The San Juan National Forest closed parts of the trail system in April 2024 for prescribed fire operations and for public and firefighter safety, underscoring how maintenance, access and wildfire mitigation overlap on the ground. The cleanup came as Colorado Public Lands Day, created in 2016 and observed on the third Saturday in May, continued to draw attention to stewardship work across the state, which was the first in the nation to establish a public-lands holiday.