Lakewood Bear Creek Trail Wins Colorado Lottery’s Starburst Award
Published on August 14, 2025
Pueblo, Colo. – This year’s second annual Colorado Lottery Starburst Awards People’s Choice winner is the City of Lakewood’s Bear Creek Trail improvements which beat out the Hanging Lake Trail Restoration project by just 13 votes. With 2,069 votes out of nearly 13,000, the people have spoken for this beloved community trail. Fort Lupton’s Community Park came in third.
The Bear Creek Trail project consists of the installation of over 12,000 linear feet of 3-6 foot wide soft surface trail roughly parallel to the existing concrete path through the Bear Creek Greenbelt which was funded in part by $500,000 in Lottery Revenue through a Conservation Trust Fund grant. The total budget for the project was $3.8 million.
The Bear Creek Trail is a 350-acre open space park on the south side of Lakewood. Bear Creek runs through the property and is a mature riparian ecosystem that attracts wildlife and provides an ideal outdoor recreation and open space area. The purpose of the trail expansion is to help alleviate congestion along the existing trail by providing an alternative natural surface trail for walkers and runners. Here is a photo of the trail. This popular regional trail connection and greenway hosts more than 450,000 people for walking, hiking, biking, and fishing every year.
"All of our Starburst Award winners competed fiercely for this year’s People’s Choice award,” said Tom Seaver, senior director of the Colorado Lottery. “The number of votes that Bear Creek Trail received reflects the impact the trail has had on the community and the wide number of people who love it and use it; however, all of the Starburst Award recipients are beloved projects and received a lot of votes – it was a close race.”
People could vote for their favorite project once per day and every day for the month-long competition. For each vote, entrants were entered into a contest to win a Lottery prize pack valued at more than $200.
Fourteen projects, leveraging more than $114 million across the state, won a Starburst Award this year for their excellence in using Lottery funds. The diverse projects were chosen from across the state based on their creativity, economic and social impact on the community, and goals achieved. Here is the press release announcing this year’s Starburst Award winners.
About Colorado Lottery:
Since 1983, the Colorado Lottery has returned more than $4.4 billion to outdoor projects and schools through Great Outdoors Colorado, the Conservation Trust Fund, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the Outdoor Equity Grant Program, Building Excellent Schools Today, and the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office (OREC). Proceeds from sales of Colorado Lottery games – Scratch, Powerball, Mega Millions, Colorado Lotto+, Lucky for Life, Cash 5, and Pick 3 – enhance, protect, and improve parks, trails, and open space in Colorado. For more information, visit coloradolottery.com.