A restored Butcherknife Creek is now an outdoor classroom
A charitable trust and local fly fishers restored trout habitat beside Strawberry Park Elementary, and older students are already using the creek.
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Butcherknife Creek, beside Strawberry Park Elementary, has been rebuilt as a place where students can watch a stream work. Steamboat Pilot & Today reported on October 8, 2026, that the Yampa Valley Stream Improvement Charitable Trust paid for the restoration and partnered with the Yampa Valley Fly Fishers, the local Trout Unlimited chapter. Middle and high school students are using it as an outdoor classroom.
The idea started in August 2024 with two teachers who fish, Bennett Colvin at the high school and Jeff Ruff, the trust's president and a retired social studies teacher. Both were at the middle school then, and they wanted a living fishery outside the classroom door. Colvin also coordinates youth programs for the fly fishers. The paper described a finished project, not a plan still on paper.
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