The official Colorado Stargazing Trail destinations are the backbone. From there, the guide branches into regions, route loops, guided nights, extra stops and practical planning information so you can turn a pin on a map into an actual night outside.

EDITOR / WHO MAINTAINS THE GUIDE

Built as an independent night-sky road guide

Luke Huxley compiles and maintains the Colorado Stargazing Trail Guide. Destination and event pages are kept separate from the Journal and are built around current park, land-manager, tourism-office and program sources, with firsthand checks added where available.

The guide is independent from the Colorado Tourism Office, Colorado.com and DarkSky International. Official trail status and formal dark-sky designations remain theirs to define.

Luke Huxley also leads the AstroTours.org Foundation. AstroTours.org is being transitioned toward a model in which public stargazing programs help support astronomy outreach for youth groups and underserved communities. AstroTours.org appears in this guide where it is relevant; this relationship is disclosed here so readers can evaluate it alongside the guide's coverage.

QUICK READ / THEN GO DEEPER

Read the stop in thirty seconds

Every location starts with the same At a Glance questions: how dark is it, can you be there after dark, can you camp, what kind of road gets you in, are there toilets, will your phone work, can you set up a telescope, is there a guided program, and what is the place best for?

If one of those answers matters to your trip, click it. The label opens a plain-language guide explaining exactly what it means, then the full stop file keeps the longer information and sources underneath.

NIGHT RIDE / KEEP MOVING

There is always another road

Use the top menu when you know what you want. Use the Night Ride when you do not. Each page offers a few related exits. A place can lead to an event, an event to a seasonal sky guide, and a sky guide to another place where that idea is especially useful.

Start the Night Ride

FOUNDATION / LAND + SKY

The trail is new. The sky is not.

The route crosses living Indigenous homelands and much older relationships between land, sky, story, navigation and ceremony. This guide starts by respecting sovereignty, keeping cultural knowledge specific to the people and place it belongs to, and remembering that a shared sky does not make different cultures interchangeable.

The land-and-sky acknowledgement is part of the guide itself. Cultural context should stay specific to the people and place it belongs to and should not be used as a substitute for current destination facts.

CURRENT DETAILS / CHECK BEFORE THE DRIVE

Keep the live source close

This guide is the road book, not the gatekeeper. Hours, closures, fires, snow, programs and reservations change. Each stop and event keeps the park, town, operator or land manager close so you can make the last check before you leave.

For the official statewide trail itself, use Colorado.com alongside this guide.

Open the official statewide trail

MEDIA / COVERAGE

Featured in VoyageDenver

The Colorado Stargazing Trail received its first outside media coverage in September 2026 in a VoyageDenver interview with editor Luke Huxley.

Read the VoyageDenver interview