The East Lake View Road in Cherry Creek State Park, the park’s only east-west thoroughfare, reopened Friday after being closed since May.

The road was washed out by the heavy spring rains, inconveniencing thousands of park visitors and closing access to a wetlands area.

“We know people have been eager for that road to open,” said Kara Van Hoose, spokesperson for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Northeast region. “We certainly thank people for their patience while we were going through this.” 

The historic rainfall in early May brought the reservoir level up 10 feet and dropped more than six inches in a short amount of time, she said. With the park being rather flat, the deluge of water washed out about 100 yards of the road and “severely damaged” the culverts underneath until they gave way. 

“We strengthened the road to make sure that when we experience heavy rainfall events, something like this won’t happen again,” Van Hoose said. 

Family Shooting Center customers coming from Parker Road were forced to drive up to South Vaughn Way and use Dam Road north of the park to drive to the west entrance off Union Avenue and Dayton Street. The center is on the south side of the park. It had warnings on its voicemail, and website, for months.

“It’s the only road that bisects the park from east-to-west,” she said. “So if you wanted to go across the park east-to-west, or vice versa, you had to go up and around the park by taking Dam Road or go outside the park and come back in. … It’s also a popular bike route.”

The road closure also cut off access to some wetlands and some beach access. 

“Cherry Creek is one of our most-visited state parks. It’s consistently in the top three for visitation in the state each year,” she said. “During the summer, Cherry Creek is known to reach capacity pretty frequently early in the day.”