"Alderfer/Three Sisters is a very popular park in the Jeffco Open Space system and typically sees higher parking demand than available parking capacity," Chris Barker, communications supervisor for Jefferson County Open Space, said back in the spring of 2025 as the county explained why it was about to shut down half the park's access for nine months.
That's the sentence that ran in every closure notice, and it's true. It's also the least useful thing anyone told Buffalo Park residents about what was actually happening to their trail system. The West Trailhead closed from May 2025 through January 2026 for a parking and facilities overhaul, and it reopened earlier this year with a bigger lot, a rebuilt restroom, new signage, and two rehabbed trails. That part of the story is finished and it is genuinely good news. What got lost in the closure coverage is the fact that the West Trailhead and the East Trailhead, one mile apart on the same road, were never doing the same job. Anyone who treated them as interchangeable entry points to the same park was already getting something wrong, closure or no closure.
What Actually Changed at the West Lot
The scope of the West Trailhead project, at 5136 South Le Masters Road, was specific: an expanded parking lot, a replacement restroom and kiosk, improved signage, and rehab work on Bluebird Meadow Trail and Wild Iris Trail. Jeffco Open Space chose earth-tone concrete and pervious pavers for the new surfaces, a deliberate nod to the site's ranching history and to the historic barn that still stands near the lot. The county's own park page confirms the trailhead is open now, with two picnic shelters, Gooseberry and Kinnikinnick, running first come, first served, and two more, Foxtail and Poppy, bookable through Evergreen Park & Recreation District.
While the West Trailhead was closed, the East Trailhead at 30357 Buffalo Park Road stayed open the entire time, along with limited roadside parking, and Wilmot Elementary School's lot filled in as overflow outside school hours. That detail matters more than it sounds like it should, because it means the closure didn't affect the whole park evenly. It hit one specific set of trail users and left another set completely alone.
Two Trailheads, Two Different Errands
Here's the part that the renovation coverage skipped: Bluebird Meadow Trail sits on the north side of Buffalo Park Road, right by the west lot, and it's a short, flat loop. Wild Iris Trail sits on the south side of that same road, and it's the doorway to the Evergreen Mountain summit system, a climb with more than 1,000 feet of elevation gain to an 8,536-foot peak. Both trails were touched by the same nine-month project. Neither one resembles the other.
The East Trailhead tells a different story. It feeds a network of moderate loops through the park's namesake rock formations, Sisters Trail, Homestead, Silver Fox, Mountain Muhly, and Ponderosa Loop, most running between three and five miles with modest grade changes. It's the access point for Brother's Lookout and for the bouldering pockets locals call Gilligan's Island and Pirate Cove. If you're headed out to scramble on granite or walk a loop through ponderosa stands, the East lot has always been the right call, closure or not.
So the practical local knowledge isn't "the trailhead reopened." It's this:
| Trailhead | Address | What it actually opens onto | Rough time commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| West | 5136 S Le Masters Rd | Bluebird Meadow (flat, north side) or Wild Iris into the Evergreen Mountain summit push (south side, 1,000+ ft gain) | 20-minute walk, or a 3-hour summit hike, same parking lot |
| East | 30357 Buffalo Park Rd | Sisters Trail, Homestead, Silver Fox, Ponderosa Loop, Brother's Lookout, the rock-formation network | 1.5 to 3 hours, moderate loops |
If you wanted a quick evening walk or a serious summit attempt last year, you were the one dealing with detours and overflow parking at Wilmot. If your routine has always been the rock formations on the east side, the whole nine-month project happened somewhere else. That asymmetry is the actual news here, not the ribbon-cutting.
The Shelters Have Rules Too
The same either-or logic carries into the picnic shelters. Gooseberry and Kinnikinnick are first come, first served, which means showing up early on a Saturday still beats any amount of planning. Foxtail and Poppy work the opposite way: reserve through Evergreen Park & Recreation District and the spot is yours regardless of who else shows up. If you're planning a birthday gathering or a trailhead meetup with a group bigger than a couple of hikers, that's the distinction worth knowing before you drive out expecting a table to be waiting.
The Land Belonged to a Family Before It Belonged to the County
The west side of the park carries more history than the trail signs let on. The Alderfer family, ranchers named EJ and Arleta, worked that land before it passed to their son Hank and his wife Barbie. In the mid-1980s, Hank arranged the sale of the family property to Jefferson County Open Space, a decision that kept the ground undeveloped and open to the public instead of becoming another subdivision on the west edge of Evergreen. Hank and Barbie Alderfer, both recognized for decades of community service, live near Pine now. The barn the county is echoing in its new restroom design isn't a design flourish pulled from a catalog. It's the actual barn from the actual ranch, still standing because one family decided a park mattered more than a sale to a developer.
That's not a detail most residents think about while they're deciding which trailhead to park at, but it's the reason there's a trailhead to choose between at all.
Why the Trails Needed Work Before They Needed Parking
The trailhead project didn't happen in isolation. Between August 2023 and spring 2024, Jefferson County Open Space treated about 240 acres of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir in the park to reduce wildfire risk and improve wildlife habitat, work that followed composite wildfire risk maps flagging the Three Sisters area as high risk. That thinning project ran first, the trailhead and parking overhaul came second, and the sequence isn't a coincidence. You don't widen a parking lot and add picnic shelters to a forest you haven't already made safer to walk into. The two projects together, forest health first and infrastructure second, are the reason the park looks and functions differently than it did three years ago, not just at the West Trailhead but across the whole property.
What's Actually Within Walking Distance
Buffalo Park Road does more than lead to trailheads. The Buffalo Park Community Garden sits on Wilmot Elementary School property, shared between the school, Evergreen High School, and resident gardeners since its first harvest in 2016. Plots fill fast enough that the Evergreen Sustainability Alliance maintains a waitlist most seasons, which tells you something about how many people on this road actually want a raised bed within walking distance of home rather than a drive across town for one.
A few minutes down the road, Wulf Recreation Center sits by Evergreen High School with a lap pool, a fitness room, a gymnastics facility, and pickleball courts that run seven days a week. Between the garden, the rec center, and two trailheads that finally both work again, Buffalo Park Road covers more of an ordinary week than its name on a map would suggest.
The Actual Takeaway
The headline version of this story is that a trailhead closed and reopened. The version that actually helps someone living on this road is narrower: the West Trailhead was never one thing, it was two things sharing a parking lot, a flat meadow walk and a real mountain climb, and the renovation touched both without erasing the difference between them. Know which one you're heading out for before you park, and the rest of the upgrade, the bigger lot, the new restroom, the shelters you can actually reserve, just makes the errand you were already running a little easier.
If you're weighing what it's actually like to live along the trail systems west of Denver, from Buffalo Park to Evergreen's other pockets, Colorado Foothills Living spends as much time on the ground here as in front of a listing. Schedule a Foothills Consultation when you're ready to talk about what any of these neighborhoods offer beyond the map.
