Conifer's Circus Town Goes Dark October 19 for a 185-Acre Thinning

Exotic circus animals wintered on this hillside. Tigers, maybe. Elephants, supposedly. Right off U.S. Highway 285 in Conifer, on a ranch people have been calling "Circus Town" for well over a century.

And in a few weeks, you will not be able to set foot on it.

Meyer Ranch Park, that beloved Jefferson County open space where half of Conifer goes sledding every winter, fully closes to the public on October 19, 2026. Not a trail here or there. The whole thing. Hikers, dog walkers, the families hauling plastic sleds up that big meadow, all of it. The county says the closure runs through spring 2027, weather permitting, which in the foothills means do not hold your breath for an early open.

So here is what is actually happening here.

The wildfire math

Jeffco Parks & Open Space is treating about 185 acres of mixed-conifer forest. If that sounds familiar, it should. They already did a 37-acre project out here back in 2022, and this is the big follow-up to it.

The stated goals are ponderosa pine and aspen enhancement plus wildfire-risk reduction. In plain English, they are thinning the forest so a fire has less fuel to climb into. Tony Auciello, the county's natural resources vegetation stewardship supervisor, said the work spans both sides of Highway 285. The whole idea is to slow fire spread and cut the odds of a high-severity crown fire, the kind that jumps treetop to treetop and takes everything.

This is the part people miss. When they say "thinning," you might picture somebody trimming a few branches. Nope. The prior treatment used large equipment to pull trees up to 28 inches in diameter. In some areas they went for near-complete removal of the overstory on purpose, basically clearing the big conifers so aspen stands could spread back out. Aspen does not burn like pine does. That is the point.

Funding comes partly from the Colorado Strategic Wildfire Action Program and the Department of Natural Resources Executive Director's Office. State money, in other words, because this is the math every mountain town along the Front Range is doing now. You thin it on your terms, or a fire does it on its own.

Circus Town, actually

Okay. The history out here is genuinely one of my favorites, and most people sledding that hill have no idea they are standing on it.

The McIntyre family homesteaded this land around 1870 and ran it for travelers on the old Turkey Creek wagon road. Then in 1883 a man named Louis Ramboz bought it and built a Queen Anne ranch house out of lumber milled right there on the property. That house still stands. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which for a foothills ranch house is no small thing.

The place was a stagecoach stop called the "Midway House," because it sat roughly midway between Denver and Bailey. That is where the nickname comes in. Locals also called it "Circus Town," and the story goes that it served as winter quarters for exotic animals from the P.T. Barnum Circus. Picture that. You are rolling through Conifer in a stagecoach in the 1880s and there are circus animals wintering on the hill.

And it gets weirder. In the 1940s a small ski area called Mt. Lugo operated on this property. It closed in 1942, done in by wartime gas rationing, because you cannot run a ski hill if nobody can get gas to drive there. Remnants of the old tow motor are still visible if you know where to look. A homestead, a stagecoach stop, circus animals, and a dead ski area, all on the same patch of ground.

Norman and Ethel Meyer bought the ranch in 1950, which is where the park gets its name. Jefferson County picked up a portion in 1987 and opened it as Meyer Ranch Park.

Where to go instead

Look, five months is a long time to lose one of the best sledding and dog-walking spots in the foothills. The county knows it, so they are pointing people to the nearby alternatives: Alderfer/Three Sisters, Elk Meadow, Flying J Ranch and Pine Valley.

One heads up though. This closure overlaps with work at other Conifer-area parks, so do not assume every option is wide open. Flying J, for one, has its own closure situation going on. Check before you load the car and the dog and the kids, because there is nothing worse than driving up 285 only to hit a gate.

Here is the quiet real estate angle, and I am not going to force it. Wildfire mitigation on public land right next to where people live is not just a trail inconvenience. It is one of those things that shows up later in insurance conversations and in how buyers look at foothills property. Treated open space next door is a feature, not a bug, even if it means a winter without sledding. People moving to Conifer and places like it are starting to ask about exactly this, and we at Symbio Homes field that question more than you would think.

So go get your last walk in before the 19th. Say hi to the old Queen Anne house. And when it reopens in 2027, the forest around Circus Town is going to look different. On purpose.