Brief by Central Staff
Recreation – April 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
The wilderness portions of Great Sand dunes National Park are now closed to dogs, but leashed pets are still allowed in the parts of the park where most visitors go.
Leashed dogs are allowed in the main dunes area near the parking lot, and upstream along Medano Creek to Castle Creek, as well as in campgrounds, parking lots, Medano Pass, and the Old Liberty Road Corridor.
The new regulation, according to Superintendent Art Hutchinson, “affects a very small percentage of our visitors, but makes a difference for the wilderness and proposed wilderness areas within the national park.” The adjacent Great Sand Dunes National Preserve is all open to hikers with leashed dogs.
Hutchinson said “The park is committed to being as dog-friendly as possible,” but “pet owners need to recognize that dogs can be a threat to wildlife and certain plant communities, as well as other visitors.”
We have a pleasant memory of a trip to the Great Sand Dunes in about 1970, when we took Ed’s boyhood dog, a Labrador mix named Jet, with us. Jet loved to dig, and dig he did at the Dunes. The deeper he dug, the more the sand collapsed into the hole, and the more he got to dig. He ended the trip happily exhausted.
