Larimer girl scout camp to become University of Denver mountain campus

RED FEATHER LAKES — Buoyed by a $26 million gift from a billionaire alumnus, the University of Denver has purchased a sprawling Girl Scout ranch in the mountains of Larimer County and intends to have a mountain campus up and running there by next year.

DU purchased the 724-acre Magic Sky Ranch for $11.25 million from the Girl Scouts of Colorado, which had been using it primarily as a summer camp. As part of the transaction, the Girl Scouts will continue to lease a portion of the property for six weeks each summer.

The university’s Board of Trustees has named the tract the James C. Kennedy Mountain Campus to honor the Texas-based donor, a 1970 DU graduate and chairman of the board of Cox Enterprises, one of the nation’s largest cable-television companies, which was founded by his grandfather. Kennedy had been publisher of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel in the late 1970s, and Forbes magazine lists his current net worth at more than $9 billion.

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Jeremy Haefner, DU’s chancellor, cited Kennedy’s “enthusiasm and long-held commitment to conservation, sustainability, and outdoor education. Jim Kennedy also deeply believes in DU’s vision for providing students with impactful experiences, as well as learning and skill-building in the great outdoors.”

The ranch, at 17,900 Red Feather Lakes Road (Larimer County Road 74E), ranges from 7,800 to nearly 9,000 feet in altitude. Its rolling terrain, bordering the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, features miles of existing trails, rock outcroppings, ponderosa and lodgepole pines, Douglas firs and junipers. Its 59,207 total square feet of building space includes a dining hall, health center, office building, six all-season and four seasonal cabins, a bath house, two manufactured homes, an activity center, equestrian center, indoor and outdoor ropes courses and two tool sheds, all built in 2007. Other buildings on the tract were built between the 1930s and 1970s.

“Because the campus is funded entirely through philanthropy, there will be no additional cost for tuition or fees to DU students or families,” Haefner said. “This is directly related to and guided by our work advancing diversity, equity and inclusion.” He said the school hopes to raise another $20 million in coming years to support the mountain campus.

“This invigorating mountain environment, paired with DU’s bustling, urban campus will truly distinguish the University,” Haefner said in an email announcing the campus. “The experiences we will all have—but most especially our students—at the Kennedy Mountain Campus will strengthen connections to DU, as well as instill a conservation mindset and lifelong appreciation of and respect for the natural world. The Kennedy Mountain Campus will also help build on and foster partnerships within and outside of the University community.”

According to a DU news release, a group of DU faculty experts in anthropology are studying the history of the mountain campus and its land. The next phase of that work will be done in consultation with the school’s Indigenous partners in a Class III archaeological study of the site, “ensuring equity and honest engagement with history remain forefront in our minds and planning.” An archaeological study commissioned by the university revealed that Indigenous people lived there 9,000 years ago and found a burial site dating to that period.

The university plans to build a freshman-orientation program inspired by Outward Bound programs, focusing on team-building and leadership exercises featuring hiking, rock climbing, ropes courses and other activities. The news release said opportunities also will be available for yoga, painting and writing. The programs will be part of DU’s “four-dimensional experience” program that promotes intellectual growth, career preparation, well-being and character.