Rugged bluffs and a surprisingly green, forested part of Colorado Springs’ eastern plains are known among researchers of natural and human history. Among the broader public, Corral Bluffs and Jimmy Camp Creek are lesser known. 

But people can get familiar on rare occasions this summer. 

The Colorado Springs Parks Department recently announced opening registration for free, guided hikes at the two places off Colorado 94 — both closed for decades under the city’s ownership. That’s while management has focused on protecting the fossil- and artifact-rich mosaic of global significance, as widely documented. 

“These are places people can’t normally visit, and that’s intentional,” Regional Parks, Trails and Open Space Manager Scott Abbott said in a news release. “Guided tours allow people to experience these landscapes in a meaningful way while ensuring they are protected for future generations.” 

Corral Bluffs hikes are slated for the first Saturdays of the month from May through October. At Jimmy Camp Creek, hikes are slated for the last Saturdays of the month. Registration and more info is posted at coloradosprings.gov/corralbluffs.

Over the years, tours have been more frequent at Corral Bluffs, while tours at Jimmy Camp “were very sparse and not fully open to public sign-ups,” a city spokesperson said. “This is a new call for public interest.” 

There has never been a shortage of interest for people like Matt Mayberry. The city’s cultural services manager has known Jimmy Camp as an “oasis for human occupation” — dating long before the namesake man established a trading post here around the water and trees in the 1830s. Evidence places mankind in the area 3,500 years ago, and Mayberry has suspected more evidence could determine a presence closer to 8,000 years ago. 

“The archaeological resources out there are just phenomenal in terms of the density of sites,” Mayberry said in a previous interview. He called Jimmy Camp “really quite unlike anywhere that exists on the Front Range.”

And combined with Corral Bluffs, “when you look at them like a single landscape, it is unique to any place in the state of Colorado,” Mayberry said. “It’s similar to what you might find in the Four Corners area.”

Since Corral Bluffs entered the city’s trust in 2008, paleontologists have continued to find fossils and discover animals that rose in the wake of the dinosaurs’ extinction. The Smithsonian’s Kirk Johnson has said Corral Bluffs “likely represents one of the top 20 sites in the world for the preservation of the first 1 million years of the age of mammals.”

The site was the focus of a 2019 PBS documentary called “Rise of the Mammals.” 

“As much as I’ve talked about the ‘Rise of the Mammals’ documentary, there are always people who have not seen it or don’t know about that story,” Mayberry said. “And so sharing that information and interpreting that and reminding people that these are public resources stewarded by the Parks Department, I think that’s important.”