Rye, CO: Here’s Where We Start

To say that Greenhorn Mountain looms over tiny Rye, CO would be an understatement. At 12,352 feet, it’s the highest point in Pueblo County and visible from as far away as Colorado Springs and Trinidad.

In Rye, however, its presence goes beyond geography. Greenhorn Creek and Greenhorn Road run through town. If you want to learn martial arts, you’ll do it at the Greenhorn Fight House. The local newspaper is the Greenhorn Valley View. And if it’s not Greenhorn, it’s almost as likely to be Cuerno Verde, which, of course, is Spanish for “green horn.” Both refer to father-and-son Comanche chiefs who each wore a headdress adorned with green-dyed buffalo horns. The son was killed by the Spanish near what today is Rye on September 3, 1779.¹

Still, as I drove into Rye on a recent Sunday morning, it was all too easy to fixate on “greenhorn’s” more common meaning — a newcomer, someone who is without experience or even naive.

Maybe that’s not entirely fair. I’ve been a journalist for more than 40 years and been riding bikes a whole lot longer. But five months ago, I sold the magazine I founded more than 30 years ago. As I’ve shared elsewhere, I didn’t have much of a plan for what would come next, other than riding more and wanting to get back into writing.

Given those intentions, the idea for this site wasn’t that great a leap. But in all honesty, I wasn’t sure I was up to it. It’d been years since I’d written anything more than marketing materials and even longer since I’d been on an actual reporting trip. Which is why my initial trip to Rye was a bit of a test drive. Close to my home base in La Veta, I figured I could do a quick ride, get a feel for the town, and be back home for dinner. I intentionally picked a short route for the ride, which would leave time for plenty of stops while I figured out the logistics of following GPS directions while simultaneously trying to map out a story of my own.

Sounds simple enough, right? Not so much. For me at least, the ride I expected to be hardly epic proved to be just the opposite.

While You’re in Town

With a total population of 205 and a commercial district that’s only a few blocks long, I wasn’t expecting much from the town of Rye. But the town’s beloved Rye Cafe is an absolute winner.

First and foremost a pizza joint, the cafe also has a variety of sandwiches and a limited all-day breakfast menu that includes a croissant egg sandwich. Though the croissant falls at the bottom of my personal egg-sandwich power ranking (biscuit, bagel, English muffin, and, finally, croissant), this was a good one. I paired it with the cafe’s signature “GVC” — the “C” is for “casserole,” which is as good a way as any to describe this gooey mix of of cheese, green chili, and hash browns (I’ll leave it to you to figure out what the “GV” stands for) — as a side dish. My total bill was a whopping $10. Brewed coffee only.

Neighboring Colorado City offers an affordable Days Inn hotel (there’s not much traditional lodging in Rye proper) and a few other dining options. I can recommend High Octane BBQ closer to I-25. Other local favorites include Three Sisters Tavern and Bolt Burgers and Shakes.

Finally, no trip to Rye would be complete with a detour to Bishop Castle, which is 16 miles up Colorado Highway 165. Over the course of four decades, Jim Bishop almost single-handedly built a castle that sits at 9,000 feet above sea-level and climbs another 160 feet into the sky. 5280 wrote about it on several occasions.

My Ride

This barbell-shaped route comes from my friends at the Gravel Adventure Field Guide, who make printed gravel guides that you really should check out. Here again, I chose the route specifically because it was short — you certainly wouldn’t come all the way to Rye just to do this ride. But in a mere 16 miles it gives a surprisingly good overview of the area and would be a good recon ride before longer efforts on subsequent days.

Leaving from the Rye Cafe and the center of town, Main Street quickly swings right and becomes Park Road. Both are paved, but you’ll immediately be climbing at a steady 3-6 percent grade. Your first real turn is a half-mile later — onto gravel and Cuerno Verde Road. Even by small-town standards, these roads are quiet except for a few barking dogs. On my Sunday morning ride, I didn’t see a single car before entering the Rye Mountain Park.

Even before you actually get to the park, the ever-denser Ponderosa pines lining the road will give the illusion that you’re already far from civilization (just don’t look to closely to see the houses hiding behind the trees). In reality, you’ll only be 1.5 miles from where you started when you veer left onto Preseren Road and into the park proper.

The roads in the park are generally hard-packed dirt with only the lightest sprinkling of gravel (YMMV), though the approach to Mariposa Road at mile 2.4 gets a bit rougher and narrower and is covered in a deep bed of dry pine needles. Be careful.

Of course, a more careful rider would probably also have been paying attention to the dark clouds forming over Greenhorn Mountain. Not me. I was fully in “reporter” mode — not just taking notes on such things as terrain, directions, and possible storylines, but also wrestling with how to best take those notes. Should I stop along the roadside and tap them out on my phone? Or could I dictate my great thoughts while on the roll?² Truth be told, I hadn’t expected to be having this much fun. I’d been worried about being rusty, but instead this was a version of myself I hadn’t seen since before the business I started 30 years ago took everything over.

The route exits the park at Mariposa Avenue and you’ll spend a few easy miles on pavement before returning to gravel on the aforementioned Greenhorn Road for a fast three-mile descent that would have been faster for me had it not been for a bit of washboard. Generally speaking, though, Rye’s roads are well-maintained and well-marked.

When you hit the other end of the barbell at the Eastern-most point on this route, the terrain changes significantly. Gone are the evergreens, replaced by scrub oak and lots of exposed rock. The gravel gets a whole lot looser and it feels like you’ve suddenly crossed into a whole different eco-system.

As you come around the bend on Apache City Road, keep an eye out for what remains of the Shady Greenhorn, a former inn and cafe that more recently was home to a thrift store. It’s also the site of a water well that’s said to have been dug in 1872 to provide relief to Pony Express riders and travelers on the Taos Trail.³

The route soon turns off onto unmaintained double-track, which brought me face-to face with the menacing clouds that had been rolling in behind my back ever since the descent on Greenhorn Road. By now, they had grown into a full-blown thunderstorm.

Almost immediately, the skies opened with the kind of cold, hard rain that you’re sure is about to become hail. It was only five miles back to my car, but now I was heading toward the storm and the gaps between lightning and thunder had narrowed too much less than “one-Mississippi.”

There are times when it’s fun to ride in the rain, especially when you know it won’t be for hours and hours. This was not one of those times. I was in an open area, with no obvious place to shelter. So, alternating between thoughts of whether titanium bikes attract lightning and do rubber tires really protect you from electricity⁴, I put my head down and time-trialed back to town. The hail never came, but I ended the ride shivering, with my legs were far more drained than you would have ever expected after a 90-minute spin.

After changing into dry clothes, I couldn’t help but laugh at my rookie mistakes. Maybe I was a bit of a greenhorn, after all? Suffice it to say, be aware of your surroundings on any ride, but especially if you’re foolish enough to start that ride in the afternoon during the springtime, when storms are most common in the Rockies.

Bigger picture, if the point of all of this was to be more present and stop doing everything on auto-pilot, I suppose I still have work to do. Even so, leaving town with a hot pizza from the Rye Cafe that I’d bought for that night’s dinner, the day felt like it had been a pretty great start. And, yes, the pizza was gone long before I got home.

Other Routes

If you’re looking for something more ambitious, consider these. Also keep in mind that Rye (and the Rye Cafe) can also serve as a worthy stop along a longer route that starts elsewhere (Grassroots Gravel’s main race passes through town each year).

• Shadow of Cuerno Verde Loop. This counter-clockwise loop provides a great tour of the area’s rugged vistas. Can easily be ridden clockwise if you’d rather get your climbing out of the way early.
• Rye-San Isabel Climb. For a more straight-forward climbing day, try this out-and-back route. You’ll be rewarded with spectacular views at Lake Isabel, and, hopefully soon, refreshment at the Lodge Restaurant, which is scheduled to re-open in 2026. Continue on Colorado Highway 165 for more elevation and as many more miles as you’d like. It’s not gravel, but there’s usually not a lot of traffic on the paved highway and the scenery is worth the extra effort.

1. His father was also killed by the Spanish, 11 years earlier, near Ojo Caliente, NM. The headdress, which was taken to Spain and presented to the King, is today rumored to be stored at the Vatican. ↩︎
2. Safety aside, Siri’s already lousy transcription abilities are only made worse when you layer on noise from wind and gravel. For now at least my solution is to stop and dictate. ↩︎
3. Today, what remains of the inn, the well, and an adjacent three-bedroom home could all be yours. ↩︎
4. The answer to the latter question is a definite no. ↩︎