For nine days starting Saturday, Sept. 26, volunteers across the Fountain Creek watershed will pick litter out of its creeks, trails and open spaces. The watershed begins in the Tri-Lakes, and this year Monument has two public cleanups on the Santa Fe Trail and Palmer Lake has one crew at Glen Park, plus a noxious-weed pull there on opening morning. Anyone can join. The district supplies gloves, bags and grabbers at no cost, and walk-ups are welcome.
Creek Week is run by the Fountain Creek Watershed District, which bills it as the largest watershed-wide cleanup in Colorado. This is its thirteenth year. It runs from Sept. 26 through Oct. 4, and the district says more than 50 public events are on its calendar this year, from Palmer Lake to Pueblo.
The Tri-Lakes sits at the top of that system. The district describes its territory as running from Palmer Lake at the north end to Pueblo at the south, where Fountain Creek joins the Arkansas River. Mary Wilson, the district’s lead outreach coordinator, made the point to the Monument Town Council on Sept. 8, when council proclaimed Creek Week in the town. “We do have a headwater responsibility to take care of our downstream neighbors,” she said. The Town of Palmer Lake had a matching proclamation on its Sept. 10 board agenda.
If you go
Register: Creek Week crew member sign-up, open until 8 p.m. Oct. 4. It asks for a first name and email. Each crew sets its own date and start time within the nine days.
Map: Creek Week 2026 cleanup map, with public, private and unclaimed sites marked
Walk-ups: welcome, according to the district, with a waiver signed on site
Bring: closed-toe shoes and water. Gloves, bags, buckets and grabbers are welcome, but the district supplies them free.
Questions: [email protected]
Monument: two public stretches of the Santa Fe Trail
Wilson told council that Monument already had three cleanups on the calendar: one private and two public, both on the Santa Fe Trail. The district’s cleanup map shows the same thing. One public crew covers the trail from the Monument trailhead to Ranchero Drive, and the other covers it from Ranchero Drive south to the Baptist Road trailhead. The third Monument site, at Monument Lake, is a private cleanup, open only to the group that organized it. Wilson also told council that anyone who happens on a cleanup while out walking or riding can join it by signing a waiver on the spot.
The trail is El Paso County’s New Santa Fe Regional Trail, a gravel path on the old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe right-of-way. Its trailheads are at Palmer Lake, on Third Street in Monument and at Baptist Road. The county lists the Monument trailhead restroom as closed from Nov. 1 to March 31, and the Baptist Road restroom as closed until further notice.
Palmer Lake: Glen Park and a weed pull
In Palmer Lake the public crew works North Monument Creek at Glen Park. On opening morning the same site hosts a noxious-weed removal from 8:45 to 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 26, listed on the events calendar of the Colorado Native Plant Society. The listing says no experience is needed, asks volunteers to bring water and sturdy shoes, and promises a free T-shirt. Registration for the weed pull is through the society’s event page, not the Creek Week sign-up.
Glen Park sits beside a creek that has been short of water this year. As of Aug. 13, Palmer Lake’s own water resolution recorded that Monument Creek, the town’s primary surface water source, had been dry since the middle of June, with no flow from Glen Park Reservoir.
Sites nobody has claimed yet
The map also shows sites in and around the Tri-Lakes that have no crew: Palmer Lake itself, Santa Fe Open Space, Fox Run Regional Park, Black Forest Section 16 and Pineries Open Space. Black Forest Regional Park has a public crew. Crew-leader registration, the step that claims a site, has closed. The district’s page still invites anyone who wants a site that isn’t on the map to email its outreach coordinator.
What the crews pick up
The district’s summary of last year’s Creek Week counts about 1,500 volunteers and about 16.5 tons of litter and debris, 1,705 bags in all. Palmer Lake’s share was 25 volunteers and 20 bags. Across the twelve cleanups from 2014 to 2025 the district tallies 24,737 volunteers and 188.8 tons.
The district also surveyed its 2025 crew leaders on what they found most often. Plastic bottles and caps topped the list, reported by 56 of 63 respondents, followed by food packaging (49), plastic bags (39) and soda cans (35). Among the oddities the district listed were a rocking chair, a sink, a fire extinguisher and a samurai sword.
Crews that finish a cleanup can take a photo to the district’s “Hydration Celebrations,” where participating venues give volunteers a discount on beer.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Monument Town Council, September 8, 2026, the meeting at which council proclaimed Creek Week · In Palmer Lake, Outdoor Watering Is Now One Hour a Week, by Bucket, on the dry creek at Glen Park.
Fountain Creek Watershed District: Creek Week 2026 · Past Creek Weeks and impact · Creek Week 2025 summary report · Creek Week 2026 cleanup map · Crew member registration.
Town records: Town of Monument, Town Council agenda packet, Sept. 8, 2026, Creek Week proclamation (p. 19), and the meeting recording · Town of Palmer Lake, Board of Trustees regular meeting packet, Sept. 10, 2026, district presentation and proclamation (pp. 3–14).
Trails and events: El Paso County Parks, New Santa Fe Regional Trail · Colorado Native Plant Society, Creek Week Noxious Weed Removal – Palmer Lake.
Methodology
Site names, the public and private status of each site, and which sites are unclaimed come from the district’s cleanup map, read on Sept. 22. The map can change as crews register. Volunteer, tonnage and survey figures are the district’s own. They come from its 2025 summary report, which elsewhere gives 70 crews and 90 groups for the same year, so this article does not print a crew count. Remarks by Mary Wilson, including the account of walk-up waivers, come from the town’s recording of the Sept. 8 council meeting, working from captions generated by automatic speech recognition rather than written by a person. Machine transcription misrenders names and garbles figures, so no figure in this article is taken from the transcript; each comes from a district document. Palmer Lake’s Sept. 10 minutes have not been published, so this article says only that the proclamation was on the agenda.