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Inside Fort Collins

Families

Fort Collins with kids: the museum, the farm, the pool, the trails and Horsetooth

Where to take children in Fort Collins: the Museum of Discovery and its dome, the Gardens on Spring Creek, the farm at Lee Martinez Park, City Park and its pool, the Spring Creek and Poudre trails, storytimes at three libraries, and the swim beaches and trails at Horsetooth, with hours and prices from each operator.

· Checked October 1, 2026

Fort Collins is a city of 170,000 with a university in the middle of it, and the things built for its children are built at that scale: a science museum with a dome theater, a botanic garden with its own children’s garden, a working farm inside a city park, an outdoor pool with a lazy river, more than thirty miles of paved trail and a reservoir in the foothills. Here is what there is, with the hours and prices each operator publishes.

The museum: Fort Collins Museum of Discovery

The Fort Collins Museum of Discovery at 408 Mason Court is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9 to 5, and closed Mondays and on most major holidays, including January 1, June 19, July 4, Thanksgiving and December 24 and 25. Admission is $15.50 for adults and $12.75 for youth aged 2 to 12, students with ID and seniors; children under 2 and members are free, and the OtterBox Digital Dome Theater is $6 on top for non-members. The Archive, the rooftop observation deck, the store and the café are always free, and so is parking at the museum, with overflow on Cherry Street. The museum is a partnership between the City and a nonprofit: the Fort Collins Museum of 1941 and the Discovery Science Center of 1989 merged in 2008 and opened the Mason Court building in 2012, and it has had more than 1.25 million visitors since.

The gardens: The Gardens on Spring Creek

The Gardens on Spring Creek, the City’s 12-acre botanic garden at 2145 Centre Avenue, opened in 2004 and added its Children’s Garden in September 2006, built with more than $500,000 in private donations. The main loop is 0.55 miles of paved, wheelchair-accessible path and the other paths are graded for strollers; a Butterfly House is included with admission. Summer hours are Monday to Wednesday and Friday 10 to 5, Saturday and Sunday 9 to 5, closed Thursdays. Admission is $12.50 for adults, $10.50 for children 2 to 17, students with ID, military and over-65s, and $1 with SNAP/EBT; members are free, and parking in the lot off Centre Avenue is free. The gardens run storytimes and camps for children, Pumpkins on Parade on October 22 to 25, a summer concert series and the Garden of Lights in winter.

The farm: Lee Martinez Park

The Farm at Lee Martinez Park, 600 North Sherwood Street, is a working farm the City has run since 1985, with 40 to 60 animals at a time, including horses, cows, chickens, sheep and baby goats. From April through October it is open Wednesday to Saturday 10 to 5 and Sunday noon to 5, with Tuesdays added in June, July and August; from November through March it closes at 4. Pony rides run April to October on weekends, Saturdays 11 to 3 and Sundays noon to 3, for riders aged 2 and up and under 150 pounds, at $8 plus farm admission; hayrides and guided farm tours are $4 a person. Lee Martinez Park around it has a playground with a chair zipline and poured-in-place surfacing, basketball and tennis courts, ball fields and a direct connection to the Poudre River Trail, with two parking lots, one by the farm off Sherwood and one off Elm Street by the tennis courts.

City Park and the pool

City Park, at 1500 West Mulberry Street has been the city’s park for more than a century: Sheldon Lake, where people fish, a playground, ball fields, tennis courts, four lighted pickleball courts, the nine-hole City Park Nine golf course, the Recreation Department’s pottery studio, and the City’s Independence Day celebration each July. City Park Pool, at 1597 City Park Drive beside the lake, is the outdoor pool: a 30-foot waterslide, a lazy river, a zero-entry pool, geysers and play features. The 2026 season runs May 25 to August 18, open 11 to 6 on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and weekends and 11 to 7 on Tuesday and Thursday, then on a reduced schedule to Labor Day; admission is charged for everyone entering, with the fees on the Recreation Department’s passes page. On Saturdays and Sundays from May through September the restored trolley, Car 21, runs the 1.5 miles of Mountain Avenue between City Park and Old Town.

The trails

The City’s paved trails are flat enough for a child on a first bike and open from 5 am to 11 pm, with a 15 mph courtesy speed limit and dogs on a short leash. The Spring Creek Trail runs 6.6 miles across the city from Spring Canyon Community Park in the west to the Poudre River east of Timberline Road. The Poudre Trail runs 12.3 miles along the river from North Overland Trail to East Drake Road, past Lee Martinez Park, and connects to CSU’s Environmental Learning Center. The Fossil Creek Trail (8.5 miles), the Mason Trail (4.6 miles south from Laurel Street) and the Power Trail (4 miles) fill in the south side, and the Long View Trail runs 4 miles down Shields Street into Loveland. For dirt, Pineridge Natural Area at the foot of the hills has 7 miles of soft-surface trail including a 1.8-mile loop around Dixon Reservoir, open 5 am to 11 pm with leashed dogs allowed.

The library

The Poudre River Public Library District has three branches in the city: Old Town Library at 201 Peterson Street, Harmony Library at 4616 South Shields Street and Council Tree Library at 2733 Council Tree Avenue. Old Town and Harmony are open Monday to Thursday 9 to 8, Friday 9 to 6, Saturday 9 to 5 and Sunday noon to 5; Council Tree is open 9 to 8 Monday to Saturday and noon to 5 on Sunday. Storytimes run every weekday at 10 and 11: toddler (ages 2 to 3) and ages-4-and-up storytimes at Council Tree on Mondays and Tuesdays, baby storytime (birth to 2) at Harmony on Mondays, Old Town on Tuesdays and Council Tree on Wednesdays, bilingual Spanish-English storytimes at Harmony on Tuesdays and Old Town on Thursdays, all-ages storytimes at Harmony and outdoors at Old Town on Wednesdays, Mindful Movement at Old Town on Fridays, and an all-ages storytime at Council Tree on Saturdays at 10, with ASL interpretation on the fourth Saturday. They pause for breaks, including December 21 to January 3. The kids page lists the rest: a free ten-week Summer Adventure reading program, Reading Buddies pairing children aged 5 to 10 with trained teen buddies, take-home early-literacy kits in English and Spanish, and Evie, the mobile library.

Horsetooth

Horsetooth Reservoir, Larimer County’s six-and-a-half-mile lake in the foothills west of the city at 5,420 feet, has two swim beaches open from Memorial Day weekend through about October 1, with no dogs at the swim areas, campsites at South Bay and Inlet Bay by reservation, and fishing for walleye, bass and trout. A daily permit is $10 a vehicle, $20 with a boat trailer, valid 24 hours from a pay station or the Text2Park app; an annual permit is $100 for county residents. Horsetooth Mountain Open Space above it, 2,711 acres from 5,430 to 7,255 feet about four miles west of town, has 29 miles of hiking, biking and horse trails, dogs on leash throughout, and the same $10 daily permit. The main lot fills, and the County says to arrive before 9 am or after 3 pm on summer weekends or expect a long wait.

What’s on

Family events in Fort Collins are listed on the events page as they are found. If you know of one that is missing, send it in.

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