Views from the Mile High Loop include City Park’s Ferril Lake, the City Park Pavilion, and the peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
BOUNDARIES: Colorado Blvd., 17th Ave., York St., 23rd Ave.
DISTANCE: 3.1 miles
DIFFICULTY: Easy
PARKING: Free parking is available around the park and in the parking lots of Denver Zoo and Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
PUBLIC TRANSIT: RTD local bus 20
Denver’s newest footpath celebrates the city’s claim to fame: being 5,280 feet above sea level, or 1 mile high. The Mile High Loop was created as a way for pedestrians and runners to enjoy exercising along a trail that hits the elevation of 5,280 feet throughout City Park. The graveled path takes you past lakes, ponds, fountains, playgrounds, statues, gardens, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and features one of the best views of the Rocky Mountains in the city. The Mile High Loop is certainly not the only path in City Park, and while it traverses paved roads and bicycle paths, it provides another way for even locals to enjoy Denver’s largest park. The time of day and the seasons will affect what you can see along the way—from blossoming trees to an electric light fountain and much more.
Note: As with other park walks, be aware that this trail crosses roads within the park. Always cross roads cautiously because cars have access to the park as well.
Walk Description
Begin the walk at the Mile High Loop sign, to the west of Ferril Lake and the Pavilion. 
City Park is a sprawling 370 acres but is divided in half by 23rd Avenue, leaving the City Park Golf Course taking up one half on the north side. You should be standing on a small island between a road and a parking lot with Ferril Lake to one side and Duck Lake on the other. There is a historical sign here with more details.
Cross the parking lot and walk to the trail where it begins below the rim of Ferril Lake. Ferril Lake is named after Colorado’s poet laureate of 1979, Thomas Ferril, who enjoyed walks around this lake with his dog.
Walk north on the trail, with the walls of the 
Denver Zoo on your left. Duck Lake, which is on your left too, is part of the Denver Zoo and is often filled with a variety of birds.
As you leave the lake and enter the meadow below the 
Denver Museum of Nature and Science, you will pass the lilac and crab apple garden on your left. This is so pretty in the spring when the pink, white, and purple fragrant blossoms are at their peak.
Just before the trail curves is a mile-high marker across the path. It’s a quirk of Denver to have these random 5,280-foot markers in a few special spots around the city, and people love to have their photos taken next to them. Other markers are found on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol Building (Walk 1) and along the purple row of seats at Coors Field (Walk 5).
Follow the trail as it curves right and becomes parallel with the museum. The west side of the museum looks out over City Park. This is a great place for a little detour up the steps to the museum. Look west and take in the spectacular Rocky Mountain view.
Kid Tip: If it’s summer, you’ll be enjoying the rose gardens and the 
H2Odyssey Interactive Water Fountain that flanks this side of the museum as well. That’s right, interactive as in walk right into the huge sprays of water shooting up.
Kid Tip: If you want to make your walk a little shorter, ask your parents to run downhill to the right to a playground. If they say no, don’t worry because there is another (bigger!) playground later in the walk too.
From the museum begin walking south, or go to your left, making sure to stay on the gravel-and-dirt path even when it is just a shoulder to a concrete sidewalk. The path slopes downhill past the new DeBoer Waterway, which is a lovely replication of natural mountain streams.
After you pass a wooden totem pole, you will be on the Boettcher Plaza just outside the newest addition to the museum, Morgridge Family Exploration Center. Iridescent Cloud is a sculpture by artists Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan. This treelike sculpture is one part of a whole piece of art. I love how it reflects the light and looks different during each season and time of day. Keep walking toward Colorado Boulevard, and now you are actually standing on the rest of the art installation, Spectral Band, sort of a modern pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or rainbow brick road.
Hop over the dividers to reach the sidewalk parallel to Colorado Boulevard. This is the most urban part of the loop as you walk perpendicular to busy Colorado Boulevard. In spring yellow tulips are in bloom alongside the path.
Go right at the corner of Colorado Boulevard and 17th Avenue as the path takes a welcome turn back into the calmer realm of the park’s trees and flowers.
As the path slips between Little Lake and the tip of 24-acre Ferril Lake, honking geese and other birdsongs begin to take over the city sounds. The small island in Ferril Lake is home to black-crowned night herons and double-crested cormorants—as well as the obligatory geese. A bit farther on at the lake’s west end, you can rent pedal boats to take out on the lake (wheelfunrentals.com) or bicycles and surreys to ride around the park during summer months only.
Between mid-May and mid-September, you can see the Darlington Electric Fountain put on a show during free weekly jazz concerts (cityparkjazz.org).
Just after you pass the soccer fields you will see the East High School campus on your left across the street from the park. This is another 5,280-foot point on the walk. The basin of Thatcher Memorial Fountain (also called Colorado Memorial Fountain) on your right is also 5,280 feet above sea level.
Across the City Park Esplanade is the old Lowenstein Theatre, now renovated to house the 
Tattered Cover Bookstore with a coffee and pastry shop, and next door is 
Twist & Shout music store and the Denver Film Society (see Walk 17).
Curve right on the trail where mature evergreen trees provide shade along the path up ahead and parallel York Street. In spring the pink and white tree blossoms are abundant in the park, and this stretch feels like a stroll in a public botanical garden.
Backstory: Isn’t It Beautiful?
In the early 1900s, Denver’s popular Mayor Robert Speer was determined to turn the arid plains of this growing new city into the “Paris of America,” as he was inspired by the City Beautiful Movement that was transforming urban planning across the country then.
To show off his “Denver the City Beautiful,” Mayor Speer commissioned a Darlington Electric Fountain—with nine colored lights and 25 water jets—to be built in City Park’s Ferril Lake. Joseph Addison Thatcher, founder of the Denver National Bank, donated the fountain to the city of Denver in 1918. Sculptor Lorado Zadac Taft created the single female figure to stand for Colorado and three smaller figures to represent the virtues of the state: loyalty, learning, and love.
Time was not kind to the fountain, and it went unused for decades until once again a mayor found himself inspired by politics (of course!). When he was Denver’s mayor, John Hickenlooper (who has since been Colorado governor) had the Darlington Electric Fountain and the Thatcher Memorial Statue spruced up in time for the city to host the Democratic National Convention. The Darlington Electric Fountain had to be completely rebuilt but is now serving its original purpose again to put on an impressive water and light show on hot summer nights.
The Graham-Bible House to the left is historically where park superintendents lived and is named after two former City Park superintendents.
At 22nd Avenue you pass the historic McClellan Gateway to the park.
At the corner of 23rd Avenue the trail loops around and you begin to head back toward the museum.
Kid Tip: Toward the end of your walk, there is a big playground with swings, a lot of climbing structures, and more. It’s the one I always ask my mom to take me to when we come to this park.
The 
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Monument by Ed Dwight is on your right as you approach the peach-colored pavilion and bandstand. You can leave the trail to see the monument up close and read a large plaque to the south side. Before you reach the pavilion, you will see a statue of poet Robert Burns to the left.
The loop ends just ahead to the left of the pavilion. You can combine this walk with either Walk 16 by walking east on Montview Boulevard from the east side of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science or east on 23rd Avenue or with Walk 17 by heading west on 17th Avenue.
Mile High Loop
Points of Interest
City Park 3300 E. 17th Ave., 303-331-4113, denvergov.org
Denver Zoo 2300 Steele St., 303-376-4800, denverzoo.org
Denver Museum of Nature and Science 2001 Colorado Blvd., 303-322-7009, dmns.org
H2Odyssey Interactive Water Fountain
Tattered Cover Bookstore 2526 E. Colfax Ave., 303-322-7727, tatteredcover.com
Twist & Shout 2508 E. Colfax Ave., 303-722-1943, twistandshout.com
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Monument