Last Friday night, a small group of neighbors climbed into Cheyenne Mountain State Park after dark for a ranger-led Sturgeon Moon hike. The night before, the Colorado Springs Astronomical Society had set up telescopes in the same park for a lunar eclipse viewing. Neither event made the local news. Both happened on a mountain that, as of this year, is having its biggest year in two decades, and most of that story is unfolding on the side of it nobody drives past.

Here's the thing about Cheyenne Mountain in 2026: it's carrying two different anniversaries at once, and only one of them is loud. The zoo on the north flank turns 100 this September, with a ribbon-cutting, a new building, and a week built for celebration. The state park on the south flank just finished its largest single expansion since it opened, and the story got a governor, a ribbon, and then went quiet again. If you live in this neighborhood, both are worth knowing. Only one of them is going to change what your weekend actually looks like.

The Deal That Made the Park What It Is

In May, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the City of Colorado Springs, and the Trust for Public Land finished a deal that had been in motion for years: a 357-acre parcel known as the Denman property, paired with an adjacent 127 acres the city bought through its voter-approved Trails, Open Space and Parks program. Together they brought Cheyenne Mountain State Park to roughly 3,184 acres, its biggest jump since the park opened to the public in the mid-2000s.

The detail that stops most locals when they hear it: that Denman land had already been entitled for 95 single-family homes before the deal came together. It sat right at the park's main entrance off Colorado 115, the ground you drive across on your way to the Falcon Amphitheatre trailhead. Instead of driveways and rooflines, it's now part of the trail system, and it happened to be the Trust for Public Land's 5,000th land protection project nationally, a milestone that landed here rather than somewhere with a bigger name.

The expansion also came with something more useful than acreage on paper: 11 new full-hookup campsites, bringing the park's total to 62, plus a fresh agreement covering Rosemont Reservoir up on Pikes Peak that opens the door to basic camping and hand-launched or electric boating there for the first time. Park manager Jason Hagan called it "more than a land acquisition." For a neighborhood that already treats this mountain as a backyard, it's the closest thing to new backyard the mountain has offered in years.

None of that required a ribbon-cutting to matter day to day. What it means practically is that the park's footprint at its own front door, the ground you see before you even reach a trailhead, is protected instead of platted. That's not a headline that trends. It's just true, and it's true right outside the gate most Broadmoor and Cheyenne Mountain residents already use.

Two Trailheads, Two Different Mountains

Here's where the contrast gets concrete. The Colorado Springs Gazette ran a trail feature on August 28 covering the Blackmer Loop, one of the park's signature routes, and the reporter made a point of noting how empty it stays even as hikers and mountain bikers keep choosing busier ground across the city. That's not an accident of geography. It's a pattern the numbers back up.

Blackmer starts at the Falcon Amphitheatre parking lot, ascends past old fence lines and rusted relics from the ranch land the park was built on, threads through pine and oak for shade, and opens onto foothill views toward Fort Carson before looping back. No fee waiver for locals, no dogs on this particular loop, and by the Gazette's account, still mostly empty.

Cross the city to North Cheyenne Cañon and the math flips. Free entry, waterfalls at Helen Hunt Falls, the creek-side Seven Bridges Trail, and more than 450,000 visitors funneling through every year according to the city's own park page. Same stretch of front range, and a visitor gap wide enough that one side just added nearly 500 acres and most of the city didn't notice, while the other side counts its crowds in the hundreds of thousands.

The Other Anniversary, and It's Loud on Purpose

The zoo's centennial is the version of mountain news built to be seen. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo turns 100 this year, and the celebration lands in September with a new International Center for the Care and Conservation of Giraffe opening near the entrance, a project new CEO Dave Ruhl helped design before stepping into the role in June. The zoo has also spent this year sitting at number two on USA Today's 10Best Readers' Choice list for the second year running, a ranking the staff earned through a month of daily reader votes.

What's actually on the calendar for neighbors this month:

• September 4 and 23: dog ticket days, so your zoo trip can include the whole household
• September 14 through 20: a military appreciation week, with 50 percent off admission for active-duty, veteran, and retired personnel and their dependents
• September 15 at 9:30 a.m.: the grand opening of the new Giraffe Center, open to members, media, and the public
• September 24: Zoo Brew, a 21-and-up evening with live music and chef-crafted small plates after hours

That military discount week is worth flagging for anyone in this neighborhood connected to Fort Carson or Peterson, since it's the kind of low-key local benefit that doesn't always make it onto a newcomer's radar in the first few months after a move.

Same Mountain, Different Kind of Quiet

The zoo's centennial will fill that parking lot for weeks. The park's expansion, the bigger story by almost any measure, land that could have become 95 rooflines now permanent trail and campground instead, will probably keep drawing the same modest crowd it always has, because a $10 fee and a dog restriction do more to thin a trailhead than a governor's ribbon-cutting does to fill one.

If you already live under this mountain, that's useful information either way. Go stand in the new Giraffe Center the week it opens, because everyone else will too and it's worth seeing once the crowds settle. And go walk Blackmer before word spreads that the ground around it just got a lot harder to build on and a lot easier to protect. The quiet won't advertise itself. It rarely does on this side of the mountain.

If you're the kind of neighbor who likes knowing what's actually changing here, not just what's trending, that's the running list Lux Living Properties keeps for Broadmoor and Cheyenne Mountain. Reach out anytime, even if a home search isn't on your mind this month. Let's connect.