Lyons

Seventeen miles north of Boulder, built out of its own sandstone, and organized around a river and two of the best music festivals in the country. Here's what's actually worth the drive, and what to check before you go.

Photo: Billy Hathorn ยท CC BY-SA 3.0

Last checked: August 8, 2026

Lyons is a quarry town that became a festival town. The buildings on Main Street are made from the salmon-colored sandstone dug out of the hills behind them, the same stone used across the CU campus, and the whole place sits where the North and South St Vrain meet. That river is the reason people come in summer and the reason the town nearly ceased to exist in 2013.

Three things to check before you drive out

LaVern M. Johnson Park is closed to the public from August 6 until noon on August 10, 2026 for the Folks Festival. That's the town's own notice, not a rumor. If you were planning a normal afternoon at the park that week, pick a different one.

A Stage 2 fire ban has applied in Lyons parks since June 30, 2026, until further notice, which means no charcoal grilling. Worth a same-day check, since this is exactly the kind of restriction that changes with the weather.

Whether you can tube the river is a same-day question. Tubing the St Vrain is an official town-recommended activity and free, but high water closes it, and there's no standing answer. Check before you load the car.

Planet Bluegrass, which is why most people search this town

Planet Bluegrass runs a riverside ranch at 500 W Main Street and two nationally known festivals out of it.

They don't publish ticket prices. Not on any page of their own site. Every figure sits inside a third-party checkout you can't see without starting a purchase, so we aren't going to quote one. What we can tell you is that RockyGrass sells out most years and sold out again for 2026, so this is a book-months-ahead event rather than a decide-on-Friday one.

Camping is on site and at Planet Bluegrass Farm, Shady Grove, and the town's own LaVern M. Johnson Park two blocks away. No pets, no open fires and no drones anywhere in the camping areas.

Downtown, and the stone it's built from

The Main Street historic district is fifteen structures on the National Register, built by masons out of locally quarried Lyons sandstone between the 1870s and 1917, concentrated on High, Main and Seward. The town was founded by quarry workers around 1880. The town's own self-guided walking tour is free.

The Lyons Redstone Museum at 340 High Street sits in the 1881 sandstone schoolhouse and is free, with donations accepted. It's seasonal rather than year-round, so check before a winter trip. The town says its shops are 97% independently owned, which is the sort of claim that's usually marketing and here's visibly true when you walk it.

The parks and the river

Six town parks, all free to enter, with day use from 8am until dusk. Only the parking is charged.

LaVern M. Johnson Park
On Highway 7, about five minutes from downtown, ringed by sandstone cliffs. River tubing access, camping, playground, trails, and ice skating in winter. Camping is $37 to $47 a night for a tent depending on season and holidays, and $57 to $69 for an RV with full hookups, with an off-season weekly rate of $310. Booking is required, online only, up to twelve months ahead, and summer weekends fill quickly. The town's two pages disagree on whether there are 17 or 23 tent sites, so don't count on a specific number.
Bohn Park
Riverside, a short walk from downtown, next to the botanic gardens. Tennis courts, ball fields, a pavilion, a playground, a skate park and an accessible fishing area. Parking is metered at $2 an hour on weekdays and off-season weekends, $3 an hour on peak-season weekends, enforced daily, paid at a kiosk that takes cards or cash and gives no change. An annual pass is $75 for a non-resident.
Sandstone Park
Home of the free Summer Concert Series, every Wednesday from June 17 to August 12, 2026.
Lyons Valley River Park, Steamboat Park and the dog park
All three are confirmed town parks. We couldn't reach a description page for any of them, so we aren't going to describe their facilities. Lyons Valley River Park exists because of the 2013 flood, built where the damage was worst, which is why its layout postdates everything else here.

Trails, and where to read about them properly

The two big ones near Lyons, Hall Ranch and Heil Valley Ranch, are Boulder County open space rather than town parks. Two things are worth knowing before you drive out: both are free, to park and to walk, and dogs are banned at both, explicitly, for wildlife reasons. That surprises people who assume any Colorado open space is dog-friendly.

Hall Ranch exposes the Fountain, Lyons and Ingleside formations, so it's the same stone as the buildings in town. Heil Valley is quieter and more forested, with flow trails for bikes, though part of its south side burned in the Cal-Wood Fire and is restricted to on-trail use, and its main lot can close without warning during monsoon season.

For the full trail-by-trail detail, our sister site covers both properly: Hall Ranch on Outdoor Boulder and Heil Valley Ranch on Outdoor Boulder.

Everything free in Lyons

What has changed since most guides were written

Meadow Park doesn't exist any more, and that's the single biggest trap in writing about this town. The Board of Trustees renamed it LaVern M. Johnson Park on May 2, 2016, after a former trustee. Older roundups, some tourism sites and most tubing write-ups still send people to Meadow Park on Highway 7. It's the same place. If a guide is still calling it Meadow Park a decade later, that tells you how recently anybody checked it.

Oskar Blues no longer brews in Lyons. The original 1997 location at 303 Main Street is still a grill and restaurant, but the brewing operation moved to Longmont and the brewery company changed hands. A "Lyons brewery tour" framing is out of date. We couldn't load their own Lyons page, so treat the restaurant's status as confirmed only by secondary sources.

The 2013 flood is finished being repaired, and still explains the town. It cut Lyons off completely and wrecked the parks. The last of more than 200 recovery projects, the highway between Lyons and Raymond, was finished in November 2022, and the St Vrain restoration is done. That history isn't decoration: it's why one of the parks is newer than the others and why the river corridor looks the way it does.

What we couldn't confirm

Ticket prices for either festival, because Planet Bluegrass publishes none. Facilities at Lyons Valley River Park, Steamboat Park and the dog park, whose pages we couldn't reach. 2026 dates for Lights Off Lyons, Lucky Lyons, the Halloween Spooktacular and the Earth Day event, all of which are named on the town's events page without dates we could see. And the Wildflower Pavilion concert series at the ranch, which is referenced throughout their site without a page of its own that we could find.

Found something out of date, or run something here? Tell us and it gets checked.

Know somewhere we've missed?

This site only lists places we've checked against the operator's own website, so it's deliberately incomplete rather than padded. If you know something in Boulder worth adding, tell us and we'll check it.

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