Construction is underway on several improvements to Carter Lake, but the Larimer County Department of Natural Resources and its partners have taken steps to make the disruption to campers and recreators as limited as possible while they begin the roughly two year long effort.

Intended to lessen chaos and ease transportation and parking at several high-traffic locations around the lake, the approximately $15 million project will pave areas at several campgrounds, install an entirely new parking lot and day use area, and add new stormwater infrastructure that will turn several treacherous roads into safer and more accessible paths to campgrounds and recreation sites.

Larimer County Department of Natural Resources Project Management Specialist John Plybon said a priority of the project was to minimize disruption to people who frequent the lake, so construction on each of the three campsites that will see work crews will not overlap. Of the three, two at any time should be fully open to the public.

Additionally, workers will only be on site at the current construction location between Monday and Thursday, so visitors will still be free to enjoy that site over the weekend.

Work is already underway at the Eagle Campsite, which Plybon anticipates will be completed by the end of summer. All of the work at Carter Lake, funded in part by an $11 million grant from the Colorado Federal Lands Access Program, is expected to be complete by early 2026. After that work is complete, work will begin at Horsetooth Reservoir, where crews will begin similar improvements to the area with the hope of being done by the end of that year or in early 2027.

Changes to the schedule will be posted to the Larimer County Department of Natural Resources website, Plybon added.

Standing on what will become a brand new parking lot and day use location, Plybon said that the lack of parking at Carter Lake meant that visitors would often leave their vehicles parked in unapproved and unsafe locations anywhere they could find space. One such spot was the ground where he stood, just off of County Road 31 and a stone’s throw from the shoreline of Carter Lake.

The ground has been cleared and construction equipment surrounded him, and he described the location as a staging area for workers as they pave and remodel other areas around the lake.

Eventually, once other work is done, that staging area will be paved for parking and recreation, known as the Quarry Day Use Area, named for a former limestone quarry up the hill. Installing the lot is part of the department’s goal to improve accessibility to the lake by formalizing the ways visitors use the area currently.

Historically, he said, visitors would get around the lack of parking by simply finding an open area to leave their vehicle, whether it was an approved parking space or not. So turning a place where they would often park into a real parking lot, complete with crosswalks with appropriate warnings for passing cars and trucks, was a natural solution.

“This is where people would park,” he said. “People would just park haphazardly all over the place here, and all over the county road.”

The goal of the project, he said, was to understand how visitors tend to access Carter Lake right now, and make adjustments to the area’s infrastructure to make those behaviors safer and more convenient.

“We’re paying attention to people’s use patterns currently,” he said. “We’re modifying the infrastructure to meet their current use patterns.”