Those looking to live out a festive, Hallmark-style Christmas may not need to venture farther than a small town south of Denver.
“Every year, Hallmark holiday movies drop us into snow-dusted towns full of glowing storefronts, festive markets, and built-in nostalgia,” a holiday-themed analysis stated. “The question is which real U.S. towns actually feel that way.”
Littleton, which stands out for its Main Street charm and thriving local economy, ranked first in Colorado for its Christmas movie charm and placed ninth nationally, according to The Action Network analysis.
“In Hallmark terms, Littleton reads like a Rocky Mountain version of a classic holiday town: festive shopfronts, walkable streets, and a community that feels both lively and close-knit,” spokesperson Kathy Morris said in an email to The Denver Post. “It’s the kind of place where the tree lighting on Main Street draws everyone — including the soon-to-be couple at the heart of the story.”
The Action Network rankings are based on a “Hallmark Likelihood Index” — which pulls data from more than 3,000 towns on population, number of small businesses, historic sites and December snowfall — to determine where a real-life Hallmark holiday story is most likely to happen.
In Littleton, the chances are close to 3.3%, according to the analysis.
The town boasts a population of roughly 45,500 and has more than 36,000 businesses, one of the highest totals in the country, the analysis showed. It also gets about 1 inch of snow each December — just enough for a lightly dusted holiday movie scene.
“We can’t guarantee a high-powered executive is returning to Littleton only to reconnect with her hometown crush — but statistically, Littleton gives her a pretty solid chance,” Morris wrote.
A pedestrian was killed Thursday in a Lakewood crash near Smith Reservoir, police said.
Lakewood officers responded to the fatal crash at S. Kipling Parkway and W. Jewell Avenue Thursday morning, according to a 6:48 a.m. post from the police department.
The crash shut down southbound Kipling at Jewell, but the northbound lanes remained open, police said.
Police expect a lengthy road closure during the crash cleanup and investigation. Drivers should avoid the area and take alternate routes.
Information about the cause of the crash and whether anyone else was injured was not immediately available Thursday morning, but police said it was not a hit-and-run.
Southbound Interstate 25 was closed in southern Colorado for several hours Wednesdaymorning for a fatal crash involving a pedestrian, police said.
The crash closed I-25 at exit 102 for Eagleridge Boulevard and exit 99A for Colorado 96 in Pueblo, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.
Southbound lanes were reopened as of 11:20 a.m.
Additional information about the fatal crash or the pedestrian was not available Wednesday morning.
A pedestrian was hit and killed on Interstate 25 in Denver early Saturday morning, according to the police department.
Denver officers responded to the crash on southbound I-25 near Yale Avenue at about 3:45 a.m. Saturday, police said.
Paramedics took the unidentified pedestrian to the hospital, where the pedestrian later died, police said in a 5:52 a.m. update. No other injuries or deaths were reported.
The crash area is on the edge of Denver’s University Hills, Goldsmith and Hampden neighborhoods.
Police said the cause of the crash remained under investigation Saturday afternoon, including whether drugs or alcohol were involved.
Additional information about the events leading up to the crash, including why the pedestrian was on the highway, was not available Saturday.
Some might say the new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus that opened recently in a former 255-room hotel is undergirded by one of humanity’s seven deadly sins — envy.
The intent is to turn that feeling into a motivational force. For his part, Mayor Mike Coffman prefers to refer to the three-tiered residential system at the homeless navigation center as an “incentive-based program” — one that awards increasingly comfortable living quarters to those showing progress on their journey to self-sufficiency.
“The notion here is (that) different standards of living act as an incentive,” Coffman said in early November during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the campus, which occupies a former Crowne Plaza Hotel at East 40th Avenue and Chambers Road. “The idea is to move up the tiers into much better living situations.”
Clients in the new facility, which opened its doors on Nov. 17, start at the bottom with a cot and a locker. They can eventually migrate to a hotel room, with a locking door and a private bathroom.
But that upgrade comes with a price.
“To get a room here, you have to be working full time,” Coffman said.
It’s an approach that the mayor says threads the needle between housing-first and work-first, the two prevailing strategies for addressing homelessness today. The housing-first approach emphasizes getting someone into a stable home before requiring employment, sobriety or treatment. A work-first setup conditions housing on a person finding work and seeking help with underlying mental health and addiction problems.
“We’re providing a continuum of services that starts with an emergency shelter,” said Jim Goebelbecker, the executive director of Advance Pathways.
Advance Pathways, the nonprofit group that ran the Aurora Resource Day Center before its recent closure, was chosen through a competitive bidding process to operate the new navigation campus in Aurora — with $2 million in annual help from the city. Goebelbecker said the tiered approach at the new facility “taps into a person’s motivation for change.”
The Aurora Regional Navigation Campus’ debut nearly completes a mission that has been in the works for more than three years. It is the fourth — and penultimate — metro Denver homeless navigation center to go online since the Colorado General Assembly passed House Bill 1378 in 2022.
The bill allocated American Rescue Plan Act dollars to stand up one central homeless navigation center. The plan has since shifted to five smaller centers, with locations in Aurora, Lakewood, Boulder, Denver and Englewood. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs in late 2023 approved $52 million for the centers. The final center, the Jefferson County Regional Navigation Campus in Lakewood, is undergoing renovations and will open next year.
Aurora’s center, with 640 beds across its three tiered spaces, is by far the largest of the five facilities.
Cathy Alderman, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said the opening of Aurora’s navigation campus is “a really big deal.” Aside from serving its own clientele, she expects the center to send referrals to the coalition’s newly opened Sage Ridge Supportive Residential Community near Watkins, where people without stable housing go to address their substance-use disorders.
“A person can go to one place and get multiple needs met,” Alderman said, referring to the array of job, medical and addiction treatment services that give homeless navigation centers their name. “We are excited that the new campus is now up and running.”
The new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus, operated by Advance Pathways, photographed in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
‘How do I move up?’
Walking into the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus feels like walking into, well, a hotel.
The swimming pool was removed during renovation, as was a water fountain in the lobby. Everything else stayed, including beds, bedding, furniture — even a stash of bottled cocktail delights. But not the alcohol to go with it.
“They left everything, down to the forks and knives and a wall of maraschino cherries,” said Jessica Prosser, Aurora’s director of housing and community services, as she walked through the hotel’s industrial kitchen.
The kitchen, which was part of the $26.5 million sale of the Crowne Plaza Hotel to Aurora last year, was a godsend to an operation tasked with serving three meals a day to hundreds of people. The city spent another $13.5 million to renovate the building.
“To build a new commercial kitchen is a half-million dollars, easy,” Prosser said.
The layout of the navigation center was deliberate, she said. The hotel’s convention center space is now occupied by Tier I and Tier II housing. The first tier is made up of nearly 300 cots, divided by sex. There are lockers for personal belongings and shared bathrooms. Anyone is welcome.
On the other side of a nondescript wall is Tier II, which is composed of a grid of 114 compartmentalized, open-air cubicles with proper beds and lockable storage. The center assigns residents in this tier case managers to help them treat personal challenges and get on the path toward landing a job.
The Tier II “Courage” space, which offers overnight accommodation for people who are working on recovery, employment and housing pathways at the new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus in Aurora, on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
Tier III residents live in the 255 hotel rooms. They must have a full-time job and are required to pay a third of their income to the program. Residents in this tier will typically remain at Advance Pathways for up to two years before they have the skills and stability to find housing on the outside, Goebelbecker said.
People living in the congregate tiers can house their dogs in a pet room, which can accommodate 40 canines. (No cats, gerbils or fish). The center also doesn’t accept children. Around 60 staff members, plus 10 contracted security personnel, will work at the facility 24/7.
Shining a bright light on the path forward and upward inside the facility — the windows of some of the coveted private rooms are fully visible from the lobby — is an “intentional design feature,” Prosser said.
“How do I move up?” she mused, stepping into the shoes of a resident eyeing the facility’s layout. “How do I get in there?”
The Tier III “Commitment” space, which provides private rooms that will serve people who are in the workforce and are building towards financial independence, seen at the new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
It’s a system that demands something of the people using it, Coffman said, while at the same time providing the guidance and help that clients will need.
“This is not just maintaining people where they are — this is about moving people forward,” the mayor said.
The approach is familiar to Shantell Anderson, Advance Pathways’ program director. She told her life story during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, bringing tears to the eyes of some in the audience.
A native of Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood, Anderson fell in with the wrong crowd. She became pregnant at 15 and got hooked on cocaine. She spiraled into a life on the streets that resulted in her children being sent to an aunt for caretaking.
But through treatment and by intersecting with the right people, she recovered. She earned a nursing degree and worked at RecoveryWorks, a nonprofit organization that operated a day shelter in Lakewood, before taking the job at Advance Pathways.
The Tier I “Compassion” emergency shelter, which provides immediate short-term shelter for those in need at the new Aurora Regional Navigation Campus in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
“This is a system that honors people’s dignity,” Anderson said, her voice heavy with emotion.
In an interview, she said assuming the burden to improve her situation was critical to her transformation.
“I actually did that — no one gave me anything,” said Anderson, 48. “If it was handed to me, I didn’t appreciate it.”
How much responsibility to place on the people being helped by such programs is still a matter of intense debate by policymakers and advocates for homeless people. The housing-first approach favored by Denver and many big cities across the country is anchored in the idea that work or treatment requirements will result in many people falling through the cracks and staying outside, particularly those who face mental-health challenges.
The Bridge House in Englewood, one of the five metro area navigation centers, follows a “Ready to Work” model that is similar to that of the upper tiers of the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus.
Opened in May, the Bridge House has 69 beds. CEO Melissa Arguello-Green said the organization asks its clients (called trainees) to put skin in the game by landing a job with Bridge House’s help and then contributing a third of their paycheck as rent.
“We help them find employment through our agency so they can leave our agency,” she said. “We’re looking for self-sufficiency that will get people off system support.”
Arguello-Green said she would like to see more coordination between the metro’s five navigation centers, though she acknowledged it’s still in the early going.
“We’re missing that come-to-the-table collaboration,” she said.
Advance Pathways volunteer outreach coordinator Evan Brown organizes the clothing bank before the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus’ grand opening ceremony in Aurora on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
Homeless numbers still rising
Shannon Gray, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, said her department had started convening quarterly in-person meetings across the locations.
“While each navigation campus is unique and reflects community-specific strategies, they are all a part of a regional effort to bring external partners together onsite to provide needed services and referrals,” Gray said. Together, they are “building towards a larger regional system to connect homeless households to a larger network of opportunities.”
The centers are permitted to “tailor their approach to their unique needs and vision,” she said. While Englewood and Aurora use a tiered system, Gray said, the other three centers don’t.
“It is important to understand that DOLA serves as a funder for these regional navigation campuses — we do not oversee their operation or maintenance,” she said.
Denver’s navigation center, which opened in December 2023 in a former DoubleTree Hotel on Quebec Street, offers 289 rooms to those in need, said Julia Marvin, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Housing Stability.
She called the facility an “integral component of Denver’s All in Mile High homelessness initiative,” Mayor Mike Johnston’s ambitious effort to appreciably reduce homelessness in the city. The center is just one of several former hotels and other shelter sites in the system.
Earlier this year, his administration cited annual count numbers showing a 45% decrease in the number of people sleeping on the streets since 2023 — dropping from 1,423 to 785 people, despite overall homelessness continuing to increase in that time.
In fact, homelessness numbers are still going in the wrong direction across the seven-county metro, per the latest Point-in-Time survey from the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, which captures a one-night snapshot. The January count revealed that 10,774 people were homeless on the night of the survey, up from 9,977 in the count the year before.
Anderson, the Advance Pathways program director, said the new Aurora facility was opening at just the right time. Despite a recent calming in runaway home values in metro Denver, the $650,000 median price of a detached home in October still demarcated a housing market that was out of reach for many.
“I am excited,” Anderson said of the Aurora navigation campus’ debut. “I’m waiting for people to walk through the door and start the next chapter of their journey.”
A man was fatally shot by a Greeley police officer during a traffic stop near Banner North Colorado Medical Center, law enforcement officials said Wednesday night.
The shooting happened at 3:50 p.m. near 21st Avenue and 16th Street when a police officer pulled over a vehicle for a traffic stop. The woman driving got out of the vehicle, and a man remained in the passenger seat, the 19th Judicial District said in a news release.
Police knew the man had a felony arrest warrant. When an officer told him to get out of the vehicle, he did not follow the order and reached toward a bag in his lap. The officer shot the man after he ignored additional commands, officials said Wednesday night.
He was pronounced dead at the scene. His name will be released by the Weld County coroner’s office.
The shooting is under investigation, and anyone with information about the shooting can contact 970-400-5806 or acastillo2@weld.gov.
Nine people were taken to the hospital after they were exposed to carbon monoxide in a Commerce City home on Wednesday afternoon, according to the South Adams County Fire Department.
First responders were called about people feeling sick in a multi-family home near East 69th Place and Olive Street at 12:46 p.m., agency officials said.
There were no carbon monoxide alarms in the home, but people living there called 911 after feeling dizzy and getting headaches, spokesperson Maria Carabajal said.
Carbon monoxide is a colorless and odorless gas that can come from space heaters, generators, furnaces and fireplaces, and exposure can be fatal.
Fire crews detected high levels of carbon monoxide in the home and evacuated the homeowners, and nine people were taken to the hospital for medical evaluation.
The incident is under investigation, but the leak was likely caused by the furnace in the home, which was recently serviced, Carabajal said.
A father and son were arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide after Lakewood police say they caused a crash while street racing that killed two people.
Gregory Mark Giles, 65, and Bryce Anneaus Giles, 26, turned themselves in to the Lakewood Police Department on Monday night and were arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide, vehicular assault, engaging in a speed contest and reckless driving, agency officials said Tuesday.
The multi-vehicle crash happened at 9:07 p.m. Nov. 13 at South Kipling Parkway and West Mississippi Avenue.
Five people were taken to the hospital and two of them, 26-year-old Demi Iglesias and 28-year-old Dalton Smith, died from their injuries, Lakewood police said.
Gregory and Bryce Miles are both in custody on a $250,000 cash bail and are set to appear in court Dec. 3.
According to the arrest affidavit, Sarah Bess, 18, and her fiance, Weston Owen, 18, had been living with the 62-year-old victim, who was identified in court Monday afternoon as Bess’s uncle. Bess and the victim had been out at a local bar Friday night with Owen who was the designated driver.
Interviews with Bess and Owen summarized in the affidavit offer conflicting reports on what happened on the drive home from the bar, but the victim allegedly made a move or motion that Owen took as an advance on Bess.
After they returned to the residence, the victim went to sleep and Owen called his friend Kellar Weisgerber, 21, to help “teach (the victim) a lesson,” according to the affidavit. Bess also allegedly sent messages through Snapchat, which automatically delete after a short period of time, to another person asking how to torture and murder someone. Read the full story at our partner, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.
The man accused of killing three people and wounding nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs a decade ago died in custody over the weekend, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Robert Dear, 67, died at 6:30 a.m. Saturday in the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Randilee Giamusso said. His death was “preliminarily linked to natural causes,” Giamusso said Tuesday, and prison officials followed advanced medical orders before he died.
Dear’s death ends a decade-long — and ultimately unsuccessful — effort to convict him of crimes connected to the mass shooting. Although Dear had been in state or federal custody since the 2015 attack and confessed to carrying out the mass shooting, he was never convicted because he was always considered to be too mentally ill to go through the court process — that is, he was consistently found incompetent to stand trial.
Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said in a statement Tuesday that the victims of the shooting were denied justice in the “evil attack.”
“All three victims and this community deserved the full measure of justice in this case, but they are now denied that possibility,” Allen said. “Their family members and loved ones have endured this horror for far too long.”
The Bureau of Prisons declined to provide any additional information about Dear’s death and officials with the Greene County Medical Examiner’s Office did not immediately return requests for more information.
Dear’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Dear was accused of attacking the Planned Parenthood clinic on Nov. 27, 2015. Authorities believe he intended to wage “war” on the clinic because the staff performed abortions. He arrived armed with four SKS rifles, five handguns, two more rifles, a shotgun and more than 500 rounds of ammunition, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Twenty-seven people who were inside the clinic at the time hid until they could be rescued by law enforcement, according to prosecutors. Dear fired 198 rounds in the attack and tried to blow up propane tanks to take out law enforcement vehicles during a five-hour standoff.
A competency evaluation considers whether a criminal defendant is mentally ill or developmentally disabled, and whether that mental illness impedes the defendant’s ability to understand the court process. Rooted in the constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial, competency centers on two prongs — whether defendants have a factual and rational understanding of the proceedings, and whether defendants are able to consult with their attorneys and assist in their own defenses.
Experts previously testified that Dear understood the facts and circumstances of his case but was still incompetent to proceed because he could not assist in his own defense.
Dear was known for frequent outbursts in court. During a 2019 hearing, he declared himself to be a “religious zealot” who was being prosecuted in a “political kangaroo court.” In 2021, he insisted in federal court that he was competent to stand trial, shouting, “I’m not crazy.”
In September, a federal judge started the process for Dear to be committed long-term to the mental health facility in Missouri after finding he was unlikely to be restored to competency.
The decision came nearly three years after the judge ordered that Dear be medicated against his will in 2022. Federal prosecutors believed doing so would restore him to competency.
One person was killed in a single-vehicle crash on Interstate 25 near East Yale Avenue on Thanksgiving, according to the Denver Police Department.
Denver police were called to the single-vehicle crash at around 1:14 p.m. Thursday, officials said on social media. Minutes before, officers were called to another single-vehicle crash in the same area that resulted in serious injuries, caused a large fuel spill and briefly closed the southbound highway.
Additional information about the person who died was not immediately available, and the cause of the crash is under investigation, Denver police said Thursday.
State Sen. Faith Winter was a fierce and relentless advocate for Colorado’s families, climate and transportation who forever altered the state’s political landscape by fighting to make it a better place to live, her friends and colleagues said Thursday.
Winter’s death was confirmed late Wednesday by Gov. Jared Polis and legislative leaders, and Polis ordered flags be lowered to half-staff in her honor on the day of her memorial service, which has not been announced.
“Our state is shaken by the loss of Senator Faith Winter, and I send my deepest condolences to her children, loved ones, friends, and colleagues across our state,” Polis said in a statement.
“I have had the honor of working with her on many issues to improve the lives of every person and family in our great state and tackling climate change. I am deeply saddened for her family, her friends and colleagues and her community. Faith’s work and advocacy made Colorado a better state.”
The Arapahoe County coroner’s office on Thursday confirmed Winter was killed in the crash, which also injured three others and closed northbound I-25 for more than five hours Wednesday night.
The cause of the crash is under investigation, and additional information likely will not be released until next week, Arapahoe County sheriff’s Deputy John Bartmann said Thursday. No one has been cited or arrested in connection with the crash.
Winter’s 10-year career in the statehouse exemplified her deep passion for making the lives of everyday Coloradans better as well as her remarkable resilience in the face of adversity, friends and colleagues told The Denver Post.
A Democrat from Broomfield, Winter served in the House from 2015 to 2019, moving over to the Senate after she won a seat in 2018. She also served on the Westminster City Council earlier in her career.
Winter was a driving force behind bringing paid family leave to Colorado; passing a massive 2021 transportation bill to improve the state’s roadways and expand transit options; and strengthening protections against workplace harassment, among many other initiatives.
“Faith was a deeply complex person, and she moved through multiple challenges with grace and remained dedicated to the work she was doing,” state Sen. Lisa Cutter said in an interview Thursday. “She believed in the work she was doing, believed in the power of friendship and connection and will always live on that way and certainly live on in my heart.”
Winter led the way in addressing sexual harassment in Colorado workplaces as well as her own workplace — the halls and chambers of the Capitol.
Her allegations against former state Rep. Steve Lebsock were followed by similar sexual harassment complaints from other women, leading to his expulsion from the House in 2018.
“I was always proud to stand by her side in moments when she was trying to change the culture of the Capitol,” Garnett said. “She was a leader in that space.”
Garnett met Winter as the two ran and won seats in the House of Representatives and described her as a leader among their class of state lawmakers.
“She understood the Capitol better than most,” Garnett said. “When we started, the legislature was very different: We were in split chambers with a small majority, and she knew how to work across the aisle to get some of her stuff through.”
Winter also knew when to take a stand, Garnett said, including running a paid family leave bill she knew would not pass the Republican-controlled state Senate to get legislators, the media and public talking about the issue.
Garnett was so inspired by Winter’s passion for paid family leave that he accidentally announced that his wife, Emily, was pregnant while speaking on the issue from the floor of the House.
“Somebody tweeted it and my wife texted me and asked, ‘Did you just announce I was pregnant on the floor of the House?’” Garnett said, laughing. “I told her I was so moved by Faith, I had to do it.”
Winter also cared deeply for those around her, from her family, including children Sienna and Tobin, to her friends and colleagues at the statehouse. The Capitol could be a lonely place, and Winter was intentional about connecting with people, whether through soup-making parties or field trips to pick sunflowers, Cutter said.
Flowers brought Winter deep joy, and she was known for keeping a tiny vase of flowers on her desk that she would arrange on Monday mornings and leaving single buds or tiny flower arrangements on the desks of her colleagues.
“She had a tremendous heart,” Cutter said. “I don’t know where she found the energy to do all that. I really don’t.”
Winter also faced several personal challenges, including an ethics complaint for appearing intoxicated at a Northglenn community meeting in 2024, which caused her to seek treatment for a substance use disorder.
Winter’s death caused an outpouring of grief from Colorado’s local, state and federal elected officials on Wednesday night and Thursday.
In a statement Wednesday night, Senate President James Coleman and Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez said they were “devastated” by her passing.
“Whether fighting for legislation to support mothers and families, championing groundbreaking transit policy, or simply supporting constituents in moments of need, she brought thoughtfulness, innovation, and humility to every aspect of her work,” they said in a joint statement.
Sen. Cleave Simpson, the Republican caucus leader in the chamber, said in a statement posted to X that Winter’s legacy was “one of courage, kindness and unity.”
“Senator Winter was not only a dedicated public servant but also a bridge builder,” Simpson said. “She worked tirelessly with colleagues across the aisle, forging strong partnerships with her Republican counterparts. Her ability to listen, collaborate and find common ground reflected her deep commitment to the people she served and to the integrity of the legislative process.”
House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Majority Leader Monica Duran, both Democrats, said in a statement that Winter “always fought for Colorado’s most vulnerable. Her bravery brought necessary reforms to the Capitol, and her kindness filled the building. We will all miss her dearly.”
They extended condolences to Winter’s family, including her children, as well as to former state Rep. Matt Gray, a fellow Democrat to whom she was engaged.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A $100-per-person charge for foreigners entering Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and other popular national parks is stoking apprehension among some tourist-oriented businesses that it could discourage travelers, but supporters say the change will generate money for cash-strapped parks.
The new fee was announced Tuesday by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and takes effects Jan. 1. Foreign tourists also will see a sharp price increase for an annual parks pass, to $250 per vehicle. U.S. residents will continue to be charged $80 for an annual pass.
The change in policy puts the U.S. in line with other countries that charge foreigners more to see popular attractions.
At the Whistling Swan Motel just outside Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana, owner Mark Howser estimates that about 15% of his customers are foreigners. They come from Canada, China, India, Spain, France, Germany and elsewhere, said Howser, who also runs a bakery and general store.
Those visitors already pay up to $35 per vehicle to enter the park. Adding the $100-per-person charge for foreigners, Howser said, “is a sure-fire way of discouraging people from visiting Glacier.”
“It’s going to hurt local businesses that cater to foreign travelers, like myself,” he said. “You’re discouraging them from seeing something in the country by attaching a fee to that experience.”
A Yellowstone tour operator, Bryan Batchelder with Let’s Go Adventure Tours and Transportation, said the charge represents “a pretty big hike” for the roughly 30% of his clientele that are foreigners. That percentage has been going up in recent years after Batchelder switched to a new booking service.
Next summer, he said, will reveal how the new charge plays out among foreign visitors. “They’ll probably still come to the country, but will they visit national parks?” Batchelder asked.
The charge also will apply at Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Yosemite and Zion national parks.
Interior officials described the new fee structure as “America-first pricing” that will ensure international visitors contribute to maintaining parks.
For Yellowstone park alone, the $100 charge could generate $55 million annually to help fix deteriorating trails and aging bridges, said Brian Yablonski with the Property and Environment Research Center, a free market research group based in Bozeman, Montana.
If the charges for foreigners were extended to park sites nationwide, Yablonski said it could generate more than $1 billion from an estimated 14 million international visitors annually.
“Americans are already paying more than international visitors because they are paying taxes,” Yablonski said. “For international visitors, this is kind of a no-brainer, common sense approach.”
Many other countries charge international visitors an extra fee to visit public sites, said Melissa Weddell, director of the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research. Foreign visitors to Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, for example, pay $200 per adult, while Ecuadorian nationals pay only $30, according to tourist websites for the islands.
A coalition of current and former employees park service denounced the new charge.
“In a year where national park staff have already been cut by nearly 25%, we worry this will be yet another burden for already overworked employees,″ said Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
“National parks should be available and accessible to all, or America’s best idea will become America’s greatest shakedown,″ she said.
Gerry Seavo James, deputy campaign director for Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All campaign, said Trump and his administration have worked for nearly a year to undermine the park service, slashing its budget and firing thousands of staff.
“Gouging foreign tourists at the entrance gate won’t provide the financial support these crown jewels of our public lands need,” he said. “Without that support, we run the risk of our true common grounds becoming nothing more than playgrounds for the super-rich.”
Interior Department spokesperson Elizabeth Peace said the agency previously did not collect data on international visitors but will start doing so in January.
Republican lawmakers in July introduced a bill in Congress that would codify the surcharge for foreign visitors to national parks. It’s sponsored by West Virginia Rep. Riley Moore and Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who served as interior secretary during Trump’s firs term.
“President Trump and Secretary Burgum are putting Americans first by asking foreign visitors to pay their fair share while holding entrance fees steady for the American people,” Zinke and Moore said in a statement Wednesday.
Daly reported from Washington, D.C.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Denver dropped to its coldest temperatures in more than eight months on Tuesday night, sustaining the hopes of winter-loving Coloradans for a snowy Thanksgiving weekend.
The last time DIA thermometers dropped that low was 265 days earlier, when the temperature fell to 17 degrees on March 5.
Metro Denver residents are still waiting for the first snow of the season, with this year’s first snowfall likely to be the second-latest on record.
Denver’s latest first snowfall was on Dec. 10, 2021, and the city already surpassed the No. 3 latest snowfall of Nov. 21, 1934, last week.
Denver is also approaching the record for the most consecutive days without snow, according to the National Weather Service. The 2021 record was 232 days and the city has gone 221 days without snow in 2025 as of Wednesday, the fourth-longest streak ever recorded.
Folks sticking close to home for Thanksgiving can expect warm weather on Thursday and Friday, with highs in the 50s, before a cold front brings light snow to northern Colorado starting Friday night and into Saturday morning.
A second storm system could bring another round of light snow on Sunday, forecasters said.
“Snowfall amounts look to be on the lighter side, but with cold temperatures in place, it is expected to be cold enough for roads to become slippery at times,” forecasters wrote on Wednesday.
DENVER (AP) — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that immigration officers in Colorado can only arrest people without a warrant if they think those people are likely to flee.
U.S. District Senior Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued the order in a legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and other lawyers.
They’re representing four people, including asylum-seekers, who were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without warrants this year as part of President Donald Trump’s increased immigration enforcement. The lawsuit accuses immigration officers of indiscriminately arresting Latinos to meet enforcement goals without evaluating what’s required to legally detain them.
Jackson said each of those who sued had longstanding ties to their communities and no reasonable officer could have concluded they were likely to flee before getting a warrant to arrest them.
Before arresting anyone without a warrant, immigration officers must have probable cause to believe both that someone is in the country illegally and that they are likely to flee before an arrest warrant can be obtained, under federal law, he said. Jackson also said immigration officers needed to document the reasons for why they are arresting someone.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, called it an “activist ruling” and said the department follows the law.
“Allegations that DHS law enforcement engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” she said in a statement.
Another judge had also issued a restraining order barring federal agents from stopping people based solely on their race, language, job or location in the Los Angeles area after finding that they were conducting indiscriminate stops. The Supreme Court lifted that order in September.
McLaughlin suggested the government would appeal the Colorado ruling.
“The Supreme Court recently vindicated us on this question elsewhere, and we look forward to further vindication in this case as well,” she said.
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Travelers heading to and from Denver International Airport on the Regional Transportation District’s A Line train will see up to 30-minute delays because of a signal problem, agency officials said Tuesday.
RTD canceled 24 trips and said the train is now running every 30 minutes, with eastbound trains leaving Union Station at 15 minutes and 45 minutes past the hour.
The westbound train from the airport into Union Station will leave at 12 minutes and 42 minutes past the hour. Updated service alerts are available online.
Transportation officials reported the signal problem just before 10:30 a.m.
DIA is expecting more than 845,000 passengers to pass through security during the Thanksgiving season and Tuesday will likely be one of the busiest days.
A three-vehicle crash about 9 miles south of Franktown on Monday killed five people, including three children, and seriously injured two others.
The accident happed at 4:39 p.m. when the driver of a Toyota hatchback headed south on Colorado 83 in Douglas County lost control and went off the right shoulder, the Colorado State Patrol said. The Toyota drove back on the road and then rolled into the northbound lane.
A Ford sedan heading north was hit head-on by the Toyota, which kept traveling and struck a Ford pickup, causing minor damage.
The State Patrol said the driver of the Toyota was pronounced dead at the scene after being ejected from the vehicle. The man driving the Ford sedan and three of five children in the vehicle were pronounced dead at the scene.
Two other juveniles in the sedan were flown to a nearby medical facility. The pickup driver wasn’t injured.
The State Patrol said it’s not known why the driver of the Toyota lost control. Colorado 83 remained closed Monday night as the investigation and cleanup continued.
The Douglas County Coroner will identify those deceased after all the families have been notified.
In the end, Alex Hunter picked the day of his death.
Boulder’s longest-serving district attorney — who defined more than a quarter century of criminal justice for the region and oversaw the early years of the JonBenét Ramsey case — had exhausted all options for medical care after suffering a heart attack in mid-November.
The 89-year-old spent several days in Colorado hospitals, alert and cogent, saying goodbye to colleagues, friends and family.
Then he picked 1:30 p.m. Friday as the time for medical staff to stop the life-supporting medicines keeping him alive. He drifted off and died later that evening, a month shy of his 90th birthday, said his son, Alex “Kip” Hunter III, who is acting as a spokesman for the family.
“He was just crystalline clear,” Hunter III said Monday. “He was intentional and purposeful, gracious and elegant. …He had come to a place where he was totally at peace with the scope of his life.”
Hunter spent 28 years as Boulder County’s elected top prosecutor, serving seven consecutive terms between 1973 and 2001. He forged a community-driven, progressive, victim-focused approach to prosecution and helped shape Boulder’s reputation as a liberal enclave.
He faced intense public scrutiny in the late 1990s after 6-year-old JonBenét was killed and, in the ensuing media firestorm, he chose not to bring charges against her parents — even after a grand jury secretly returned indictments against them during his final term.
Hunter kept a picture of the young beauty queen in his office and, throughout, stood by his controversial decision in the city’s highest-profile murder case, his son said.
“He probably suffered more criticism as a result of that than any other moment in his career,” Hunter III said. “And yet he remained confident till he died that that was the right decision.”
In 1997, Hunter named JonBenét’s parents, John and Patsy, as a focus in the investigation into their daughter’s killing. More than a year later, Hunter announced that Boulder County’s grand jury had completed its work investigating the case, and that there was not sufficient evidence for charges to be filed against the Ramseys.
He was roundly criticized during the early years of the Ramsey case, featured in tabloids and The New Yorker. Some called for a special prosecutor to replace him, and a Boulder detective resigned from the case, accusing Hunter of compromising the investigation. Outsiders said Boulder needed a tough-on-crime prosecutor — decidedly not Hunter — to bring justice to JonBenét’s killer.
What Hunter kept secret in 1999 was that the grand jury had voted to indict the parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death — essentially alleging the Ramseys placed their daughter in a dangerous situation that led to her death — but that he’d declined to sign the indictments and move forward with a prosecution, believing he could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It was so like him to refuse the grand jury instruction,” Hunter III said. “Because he believed in his heart that it would have a negative impact on the outcome of the case.”
Over time, Hunter came to realize the Ramsey case would define his career, even if he would rather it did not. He was surprised by how it followed him even years after his retirement, Hunter III said.
“Horrible crimes happen every day, and that was a horrible crime, but it’s had legs, it’s had a life that I think often surprised Dad in particular,” Hunter III said. “I think that a lot of Dad’s 28 years as the district attorney perhaps got lost in the JonBenét Ramsey case.”
From left, Adams County Chief Deputy District Attorney Bruce Levin, Assistant Boulder County District Attorney Bill Wise, Denver Chief Deputy District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter and the JonBenét Ramsey grand jury’s special prosecutor, Michael Kane, walk outside the Ramsey family’s former Boulder home on Oct. 29, 1998. (Photo by Paul Aiken/Daily Camera)
‘Doing the right thing time and time again’
Through the decades, Hunter was attuned to the Boulder community in a way few others ever were — for years, he invited cohorts of random voters into his office on Tuesday nights for candid discussions on crime and the courts, and he often made decisions and implemented policy based on what he heard in those meetings.
He was a master at reading a room and took pride in surrounding himself with good people, said Dennis Wanebo, a former prosecutor in the Boulder DA’s office.
He rarely faced any serious opposition on the ballot.
“He was there for 28 years,” said Peter Maguire, a longtime Boulder prosecutor during Hunter’s tenure. “And you don’t do that without being the consummate politician who has his finger on the pulse of the community, and by doing the right thing time and time again.”
Hunter was first elected by a narrow margin in 1973 in no small part because he promised to stop prosecuting possession of marijuana as a felony — prompting University of Colorado students to vote for him in droves, said Stan Garnett, who served as Boulder district attorney beginning in 2009.
Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter is pictured in this October 1980 photo. (Photo by Dave Buresh/The Denver Post)
Hunter was part of a wave of Democratic leadership that swept through Boulder in the 1970s. He hosted his own talk radio show for a while in the 1980s, and ran up Flagstaff Road almost every workday, leaving at 11:30 a.m. and having his secretary collect him at the top and return him to the courthouse. He was media-savvy and funny, charming and articulate.
He declared bankruptcy in the 1970s after a failed real estate venture left him $6 million in debt. Hunter married four times and had five children, one of whom, John Hunter-Haulk, died in 2010 at the age of 20 — the “heartbreak of his life,” that Hunter never fully moved past, his son said.
In the late 1970s, after regularly hearing people’s displeasure with plea agreements, Hunter declared that his office would no longer offer plea bargains in any cases, instead requiring defendants to plead guilty to the original charges or take their cases to trial.
The effort quickly failed as the court system buckled under the increased number of jury trials.
“People made fun of him at the time, other DAs mocked him for it and said it was a fool’s errand,” Wanebo said. “And maybe in hindsight it can be looked at that way. And yet there was also a very good secondary effect of that for our office, which was, we got really careful about what we charged people with.”
‘A Renaissance man’
Hunter was moveable when he made mistakes, Maguire said, though he needed to be convinced through either a reasoned or political argument — this is what the community wants — to change his stances.
“Alex was a Renaissance man,” Garnett said. “He was interested in everything. And he was very thoughtful, very kind. He was very ethical.”
Tom Kelley, a former First Amendment attorney for The Denver Post, remembered a time in which he convinced Hunter that he was legally obligated to release some criminal justice records to the newspaper. Kelley swung by the courthouse to pick the records up, and Hunter met him, leading Kelley through the courthouse’s winding back hallways in search of the records.
Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter makes his way down a hill in front of the Boulder County Justice Center, through a mass of media and bystanders, on his way to announce that the grand jury in the JonBenét Ramsey case was disbanding without taking action on Oct. 13, 1999. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
After he gave the documents to Kelley, Hunter immediately called up the Rocky Mountain News — The Post’s bitter rival — and let them know the records were publicly available, Kelley said.
“That was classic Alex Hunter,” he said. “He was a very decent person and he tried to give everybody a little bit of something… He had a strong political sense.”
For Hunter III, having the DA as his dad was “fantastic,” he said. His dad was regularly on the newspaper’s front page. He was “always the coolest dad in Boulder,” Hunter III remembered.
His father’s death this week feels like a mountain suddenly disappearing.
He cherishes the conversations they had as a family in the days before Hunter died.
“We were in deep conversation,” he said. “And he taught us more in that last week than you could learn in a lifetime.”
A pedestrian crossing the street was struck and killed by a vehicle Saturday night, Westminster police officials said.
The man was not in a crosswalk when he was crossing the road near Sheridan Boulevard and West 115th Avenue just before 6 p.m., the Westminster Police Department said in a news release Saturday morning.
Police found him in the middle of the road and, despite life-saving measures, he was pronounced dead at the scene. His name will be released by the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office.
The driver stayed at the scene and cooperated with police, the agency said. The crash is still under investigation.
State investigators are searching for suspects after the body of an illegally poached mountain lion was found abandoned in a Colorado canyon last week, according to wildlife officials.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife rangers responded to Taylor Canyon in Gunnison City Mountain Park on Friday after the mountain lion’s carcass was discovered near a group of campsites, according to a news release from the agency.
The mountain lion, which had been shot in the chest and left in the bushes, was previously part of the agency’s mountain lion density study in Gunnison Basin, wildlife officials said in the release.
During that study, researchers captured, marked, collared and monitored dozens of mountain lions across western Colorado, according to the agency. Nearly 100 animals were collared between Middle Park and Gunnison Basin.
“We are looking for leads or information anyone might have that could assist us with this investigation,” CPW District Wildlife Manager Codi Prior said in a statement. “Somebody killed this lion and then dumped its carcass.”
The poached mountain lion’s carcass was discovered three days before the start of legal mountain lion hunting season in Colorado. The season runs from Nov. 24 to March 31.
Anyone with information on the mountain lion or the people responsible is asked to contact Prior at 970-641-7075 or codi.prior@state.co.us, or CPW’s Gunnison wildlife office at 970-641-7060.
Tipsters who want to remain anonymous can contact Operation Game Thief — a Colorado Parks and Wildlife program that awards people who turn in poachers up to $1,000 — at 877-265-6648 or by email at game.thief@state.co.us.
