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On a blustery summer afternoon, a dozen children are climbing, swinging, and sliding at the Fossil Creek Park playground in Fort Collins, Colorado. Several whoop and giggle as they clamber up the back and hang off the tusks of a huge wooly mammoth. Preschoolers take turns on a slide built into the hillside, while older children twirl on vertical spinners and a disc that suggest the skeletons of extinct creatures. A few yards away, teenagers in black T-shirts and baggy low-slung pants, their arms outstretched for balance, grind off the metal edges of a concrete skatepark. Just beyond, in-line hockey players slap the puck against the rink walls.
Completed in October 2003, the award-winning, $9.6 million, 100-acre Fossil Creek Park offers a prime example of what we call the ?EUR??,,????'?????<
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Fossil Creek is the newest and largest community park in this city of 105,000. Our goal as collaborating landscape architects was to design a park that would meet citywide residents?EUR??,,????'?????<
Our landscape architecture and planning firms, BHA Design of Fort Collins, Colorado and Design Concepts of Lafayette, Colorado, had some history with the project. Design Concepts developed the first ideas for the park in the mid-980s, shortly after Fort Collins bought the land. BHA Design was hired in 1996 to update the master plan to support a funding initiative. In 1999, when funding became available to build the park, we formed a design team for the project. BHA Design lead the team that also included: The Larson Company of Tucson, Arizona; Artscapes, a Denver-based public art firm; and RB+B Architects of Fort Collins.
The site offered lots of potential. Situated at the confluence of Fossil and Mail creeks, it contained three large ponds and several acres of wetlands. A central knoll provided a significant topographic feature. The site also offered challenges: The banks of Fossil Creek were steep and eroded.
On a large part of the site, a flat reservoir bed was covered in salty sediments.
As it turns out one of the biggest challenges was developing a plan which served the needs of the greater community while minimizing impacts on the adjacent neighborhoods.
The design work began with a three-day collaborative design charette. Landscape architects, architects, artists, and staff from the city?EUR??,,????'?????<
An important part of the master plan process was identifying an overall theme. During the design charette, we decided to follow a design theme of fossils and geology because of the park name. Fossil Creek itself is named for small fossils of ancient creatures found along the creek. The theme influenced the design of the entire park, from the park entrance sign, to the public art, to the architecture, to the design of the outdoor spaces. The design team decided to expand on the fossil theme and incorporate images of dinosaur skeletons, ancient sea creatures, and prehistoric human campsites.
To evoke local natural history, we designed, as a focus for the park, an ?EUR??,,????'?????<
A serendipitous discovery confirmed this playground design and reflected the region?EUR??,,????'?????<
We had discussed the idea of a ?EUR??,,????'?????<
We selected a site on the east side of the park, conveniently adjacent to South Lemay for parking. The playground and a climbing wall were carved out of a knoll in the middle of the site, creating the feeling of being in a paleontologic dig. We designed the wall to look like it had just been excavated, revealing fossils of footprints and vertebrae that form the toeholds and handgrips for climbers. On one side of the climbing surface are steps and a slide; on the other is a sandstone-block retaining wall for seating and climbing, with a viewing platform/picnic shelter above it.
When playground construction began in September 2002, the project entered the realm of the surreal. While excavating the area for the wooly mammoth sculpture, the construction crew unearthed bones of the real thing! The city called Colorado State University archeology professor Larry Todd, who brought in students to help excavate bones over the next month while construction of the rest of the park continued around it. The tar pits area became a real archaeological dig as the bones of a giant mastodon and other prehistoric creatures were removed. Buried under 15 feet of soil were a mammoth rib and vertebrae, as well as bones from birds, rodents, and other animals at least 30,000 years old. Mammoths lived in Colorado from 100,000 years to as recently as 11,000 years ago. Amazingly, the archeologists didn?EUR??,,????'?????<
Augmenting the mammoth play sculpture are Kompan ?EUR??,,????'?????<
The playground is a part of a popular play area for various ages and interests. From benches on the playground edges, parents can keep an eye on their older children skating in the rink and flipping skateboards as they hop from level to level. The proximity of different play areas means that each age group has choices. The playground is dominated by children up to middle-school-age during the day. But at dusk, older kids spill over from the skatepark to climb the wooly mammoth and play on the equipment.
Located on a spit of land between two of the lakes, Adventure Island offers an intriguing departure from traditional component-based playgrounds. We wanted an unstructured play area in which kids could dig in the dirt, find bugs, splash in the water and build things with twigs. Adventure Island provides a place for children and their families to explore and discover things for themselves.
Connected to the perimeter trail by two bridges?EUR??,,????'?????<
Across a lake, an interactive water feature was designed around a theme of the ?EUR??,,????'?????<
Art and sculpture have been incorporated throughout, including a dramatic series of basalt columns standing in the largest of the three lakes. In keeping with the geologic theme, rocks of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic origins embellish planting beds and other areas throughout the park.
On top of the knoll is a sunken ?EUR??,,????'?????<
Exciting features such as a climbing wall and a skatepark have inherent safety issues. All of the playground elements are designed to meet safety codes, from the distance and depth of the hand holds on the climbing walls, to the heights and depths of the sandstone retaining-wall blocks. A ramp that connects the top of the climbing wall and picnic shelter with the playground area provides alternative access for children and adults with disabilities.
Skateboarders skate at their own risk, which is part of the thrill. We included the local skateboarding community in the design process to create a street-course design that incorporates some of their favorite elements from public spaces around town that don?EUR??,,????'?????<
Rising to the challenges of constructing this nearly $10 million park earned Fossil Creek Park the 2003 Silver Hard Hat Award for Outstanding Landscape Project from Colorado Construction magazine. Testaments to the challenges are the one-inch-thick book of construction drawings and three-inch-thick specification book. The first million dollars paid for moving several hundred thousand pounds of earth and installing utilities under the direction of Environmental Concerns of Loveland, Colorado. Clark Construction of Loveland, Colorado was awarded the contract to build the rest of the park improvements.
One major challenge was to try to restore the water quality of the lakes and relocate the 2.5 acres of wetlands that were in the middle of what is now soccer fields. Next to the reservoirs, these wetlands had become degraded salt flats. Our mitigation plan specified wetlands areas along the perimeter of the lakes with native species such as willows and bulrushes. The lakes are meant for wildlife rather than recreation, though canoes and kayaks are allowed. Deep cuts in the lake bottoms allow for fish spawning?EUR??,,????'?????<
Structures within the park include a maintenance center, an earth-sheltered restroom and concession building with a rooftop viewing deck, and several custom-designed shade and picnic shelters. The park also features built-in concrete grandstands and dugouts for the two lighted ball fields. The roller-hockey rink and tennis courts were built on post-tensioned slabs, with one inch of asphalt on six inches of concrete strengthened by steel so the surfaces won?EUR??,,????'?????<
The Larson Company of Tucson, Arizona, created custom structures for thematic features such as the mammoth, climbing wall, nautilus entry sign, shark-jaw gateway, water-feature rock formations, and Adventure Island elements such as the log bridge, tusk gateway, and tusk hut. Larson worked from a scale model and did the final sculpting of the mammoth and climbing wall, designing a pattern for the ersatz bones. Shotcrete, a sprayed-on concrete material, was used to create some of the themed elements.
Pavements include the standard asphalt and concrete, as well as crusher fines and soil-cement paving, which are more comfortable surfaces for walking and were intended to suggest the character of European parks with gravel walks. Soil cement paving is a mixture of soil with 7 percent concrete by volume, which is rototilled, wetted down, and rolled to make paths. This material looks natural, is stable enough to support small vehicles, and is more permeable than asphalt and concrete, which helps reduce stormwater runoff. To blend in with the environment, we sandblasted surfaces for a water-pattern effect and used colored stains for concrete.
Other construction challenges included the coordination of this project with the simultaneous re-alignment of South Lemay Avenue adjacent to the park, including the construction of a pedestrian underpass to connect the park to the regional trail system.
Rob Layton is a founder and principal of Design Concepts, a landscape architecture and community planning firm in Lafayette, Colo., which has designed more than 125 parks and received 17 awards. Roger Sherman is principal of BHA Design of Fort Collins, which is designing Spring Canyon Park, a new community park in southwest Fort Collins, and other parks in the region.
Fossil Creek Park is an example of collaborative and innovative design that includes public art, natural areas, and activities for all ages and abilities. With the destination playgrounds, park planners and landscape architects are creating a new type of facility that draws the community to socialize as well as recreate.
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
November 12th, 2025
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