Stand at the spot where Fontaine Boulevard crosses Crews Gulch and you're standing on a seam most people who live here have never noticed. On one side, the shortgrass prairie of Bluestem Prairie Open Space rolls out toward Big Johnson Reservoir. On the other, cottonwoods mark the start of Fountain Creek Regional Park. Most residents think of Security, Widefield, and Fountain as three places you drive between on Fontaine or US 85. A two-and-a-half-mile trail says otherwise.
Crews Gulch links Bluestem Prairie Open Space directly to the Fountain Creek Regional Trail, crossing Fontaine Boulevard along the way. It's an easy hike, not a feat of engineering, but its existence changes something about how you'd plan a Saturday. You don't have to choose between the prairie and the creek. You can walk from one into the other.
The Prairie Side Nobody Photographs
Bluestem Prairie Open Space covers 650 acres of shortgrass prairie on the Security side, and it reads nothing like the mountain-backdrop open spaces that get all the attention farther north and west. There's no rock formation, no dramatic elevation change. What it has instead is over 200 recorded bird species, herds of pronghorn that move through in loose clouds of dust, and burrowing owls that nest underground and startle anyone who wasn't expecting an owl at ground level. Dogs aren't allowed here, a rule tied directly to protecting that wildlife, which is worth knowing before you load up the car expecting a dog walk.
Big Johnson Reservoir sits at the center of the open space and is privately owned by Fountain Mutual, so it's a view rather than a swim spot, but it's the reason the birding is what it is. Ducks, gulls, and the occasional grebe stack up here during migration in numbers you won't find on a typical Front Range trail.
The point isn't that Bluestem is a hidden gem. Longtime residents already know it's there. The point is what happens when you keep walking east instead of turning back to your car.
Where the Trail Actually Takes You
Crews Gulch is the connector, and it does something a lot of trail segments in this part of the county don't: it crosses a real boundary. Fontaine Boulevard is the line that locals use to separate Security from Widefield, and the trail crosses it, tying the open space on the Security side to the Fountain Creek Regional Trail system that eventually reaches Fountain proper.
That regional trail, once you're on it, runs roughly ten miles from El Pomar Youth Sports Park down through Stratmoor and into Fountain Creek Regional Park before ending near an I-25 access road in Fountain. You don't need to walk the whole thing in one outing. What matters is that the option exists as a continuous, walkable route rather than a series of disconnected parks you'd normally only reach by car.
The Park That Sits Between the Two Halves
Roughly in the middle of all this, at 755 Aspen Drive, is Widefield Community Park and its recreation center, run by Widefield Parks & Recreation, which has served the Widefield and Security area for more than 45 years. The park has become the kind of place where a weekend plan starts rather than ends. It has pickleball courts that get steady use most mornings and an 18-hole disc golf course that draws its own regulars.
The rec center itself made a small but real change this year. Starting July 5, 2026, Sunday hours shifted to 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., a meaningful expansion for a facility that had previously kept much shorter weekend hours. If your Sunday routine used to skip the rec center because the timing never worked, this is the season to try again.
None of this requires a car once you're already in the neighborhood. Bluestem is a short drive or ride from the park, and the park sits close enough to the Crews Gulch corridor that stringing the two together into one outing isn't a stretch.
What's Waiting on the Fountain End
Cross into Fountain Creek Regional Park and the terrain changes again. This is a 460-acre linear park along Fountain Creek, and its newly renovated Nature Center is worth the stop even if birding isn't usually your thing. The Willow Springs Ponds are stocked regularly, fishing is allowed, and the Duckwood area includes a fenced dog park along with picnic shelters and a playground, a useful detail if you left the dog at home for the Bluestem stretch and want to make it up to them by the time you reach Fountain.
From there, downtown Fountain has been building a food and drink scene that didn't exist in the same form a few years ago. Fountain Creek Winery & Eatery, opened by Susan and Don Quintana on South Santa Fe near the Santa Fe exit off I-25, built its menu around house wines alongside charcuterie boards and sandwiches made with locally sourced ingredients, in a stretch of town that used to be almost entirely fast food. Closer to the center of town, Rookies Taphouse and Eatery has built a following as a locally owned bar and grill pouring Colorado craft beer alongside a food menu that leans on the same local-sourcing approach.
The newest addition sits inside a building with more history than either of them. FOX21 reported that Sonora's Prime Carniceria and Taco Shop is taking over the ground floor of the historic 1905 Woodman Hall property at 102 N. Main Street, directly across from Fountain's City Hall. The Fountain Urban Renewal Authority, which manages the property, announced the lease back in early 2025. FOX21 quoted Bill McMaster, FURA's chairman, describing the fit at the time:
"FURA is excited to welcome Sonora's Prime to our historic, 1905, Woodman Hall property in the epicenter of downtown Fountain, across from City Hall."
Sonora's Prime started as a single Pueblo storefront in 2015 and has since grown into locations across Colorado Springs and Falcon, with Fountain becoming its fifth. By late summer, the buildout inside Woodman Hall was visible from the sidewalk, and the shop has since moved into a soft opening, serving a limited menu of tacos and fresh meats while the full carniceria and mercado setup comes online. It's the kind of opening that gives a downtown block a reason to slow down, whether or not you were already headed that way.
One Loop, Not Three Errands
None of these places are new discoveries on their own. Longtime residents know Bluestem is there for birding, know the rec center exists, know Rookies pours a decent local beer. What's easy to miss is that they now sit along one continuous route rather than functioning as three separate destinations that happen to share a ZIP code.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. A Saturday that starts with pronghorn on the prairie and ends with tacos on Main Street in Fountain isn't a stretch anymore. It's a walk, broken up by a park with pickleball courts in the middle. The seam at Fontaine Boulevard, the one most people drive across without a second thought, is also the one place where you can feel the two halves of this community actually meet.
If you're already living in Security, Widefield, or Fountain, this is less a discovery than a reminder that the boundary line on a map isn't the same as the boundary line on the ground. And if you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood by paying attention to what opens, what expands its hours, and what a city agency chooses to preserve rather than tear down, this stretch of trail has been telling that story for a while now.
The Lauber Group works this side of Colorado Springs regularly, from Fort Carson transfers to families who've watched Fountain and Widefield grow into their own identity. If you're curious what your home is worth in a market that includes neighborhoods like these, reach out and get your home value.
