Colorado Springs’ Trails, Open Space and Parks program is eyeing land to add to Corral Bluffs Open Space, which was acquired eight years ago and remains closed to the public.

Earlier this week, committee members of the preservation group under the Colorado Springs Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services department toured some of a privately-owned 223-acre parcel edging the nearly 600 acres owned by the city. Corral Bluffs Open Space is shaped like a horseshoe, and the private land fills in the gap.

Chris Lieber, TOPS’ program manager, described the land as “very meaningful” to the ultimate vision for the open space.

“From a management perspective, to add this piece would make a lot of sense,” he said to the touring committee, standing in a gulch surrounded by cliffs and canyons.

The question of management and access at Corral Bluffs Open Space has lingered since 2008, when TOPS, funded by voter-approved sales tax, bought the property for $1 million. At the time, the terrain in the eastern plains was thought to become a highlight to the city’s park system – a scenic landscape for hikers and riders, similar to Red Rock Canyon Open Space on the city’s west side.

That was before officials learned more about the land and how unlike it is from anything they’d dealt with before.

Research has proved the area to be a hotbed of artifacts millions of years old. The area sits on the fabled K-T Boundary, referring to the layer of sediment that stores evidence of the dinosaurs’ demise. What’s more, evidence of Paleoindians, the continent’s first settlers following the Ice Age, has been found in the area.

On their visit earlier this week, TOPS committee members stopped to view a set of bones protruding from the wall of a gulch they were walking through.

“You find something almost every time you come out here,” said Jackie Hilaire, president of the Corral Bluffs Alliance who has given guided tours of the open space to about 700 people in recent years.

The site is expected to be designated a Colorado Natural Area in September. As much as advocates believe opening Corral Bluffs Open Space could take pressure off the city’s crowded trails, the idea of unfettered access to a site with such scientific resources makes them uneasy.

“Because it’s so unique, it has to be preserved for mankind, really,” said Bill Koerner, advocacy director of the Trails and Open Space Coalition.

One option Lieber mentioned was to develop the area and partner with an educational body such as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which has studied the area, for larger guided tours. Any option requires a management plan, and before that process moves forward, TOPS wants Corral Bluffs Open Space to be as complete as possible, with all potential access points on the table.

A long-held vision is to connect Corral Bluffs with Jimmy Camp Creek Park to the west via land owned by Nor’wood Development Group. Asked if the potential for that connection was holding up the planning process, Lieber said, “We could do a management plan either way.”

“If there’s a scenario whereby there’s a larger open space, we realize it would make sense to then plan that all at once,” he said. “But certainly, to make a management plan for what we currently have, that’s also a possibility.”

He said he was “optimistic” about a deal for the parcel toured earlier this week. It would be the second addition to Corral Bluffs Open Space, following the 2010 acquisition of a 74-acre parcel for $185,652.