Squirrel Creek Lodge Traditional Cache

This cache requires a 45-60 minute hike down the Squirrel Creek Trail. A former state highway, the trail has easy grades, but there are numerous crossings of the small creek. At the cache site you will find the foundations of the 1920s Squirrel Creek Lodge plus sites of associated cabins. Park at the Second Mace-Squirrel Creek trailhead lot above Davenport Campground. Alternatively, the trail can be accessed from Pueblo Mountain Park, a longer route.

In the early 1920s, as part of recreational development in the San Isabel National Forest, the wagon trail up Squirrel Creek was developed as Colorado State Highway 76, connecting Beulah with Highway 165.  Numerous campsites, including some across from the lodge and others further east, plus Davenport Campground, were built. Stone walls marked pullouts for scenic spots.  On peak weekends in the 1920s, hundreds of cars came up this gravel road.

But the canyon-bottom route was vulnerable, and in 1947 a spring flood destroyed much of the road, its many bridges, and most of the campgrounds. From then on, it was only a trail, and Highway 78 from up from Beulah replaced it.

Squirrel Creek Lodge, privately operated from the 1920s until the flood, offered snacks, dinners (heavy on chicken), rooms, and souvenirs. One of its competitors was the lodge at Lake Isabel, which is still open and has that old-time feel to it.

In 2009, Davenport Campground was re-done to approximate its original appearance, as designed by Forest Service landscape architects Arthur Carhart and Frank Culley.

First to find: fourwhitefeet