If you live on the Broadmoor side of Cheyenne Mountain, you already know the resort sets one clock and the zoo sets another. What is different in 2026 is which one has the louder tick. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo turns 100 this year, and the celebration is not a plaque on a wall. It is a new giraffe barn at the top of the hill, a weeklong grand opening woven into the summer, and a fall calendar that keeps rewriting itself around what is happening a mile above Lake Avenue.
The result for residents is a season that reorganizes the familiar. The people who track it get a materially different neighborhood August through December than the people who default to the resort schedule alone.
The Center That Reshaped the Hill
The centerpiece is the International Center for the Care and Conservation of Giraffe. It is easy to miss the scale of the change if you have not been up in a while. The old habitat had three hand-feeding areas. The new one has 11, inside a 12,000-square-foot indoor barn with a 25 percent expansion of outdoor space, hillside switchbacks the giraffes can climb, an event pavilion, and a hydroponic growing system on site.
The hydroponic setup is designed to produce up to 80 percent of the lettuce used for giraffe feeding and about half of the zoo's overall animal produce supply, and the project is already fully funded through community and long-term support.
Flanking the new exhibit are six bronze giraffe sculptures by the zoo's longtime sculptor Antonia Chastain, an installation called The 200 Project marking the more than 200 calves born on the mountain since the 1950s. Incoming CEO Dave Ruhl has been direct that the redesign was also about accessibility: wider paths, gentler grades, "canyons but not as steep," in his phrasing. For anyone in the neighborhood who has been rationing zoo visits around a stroller or a tired knee, that alone is a reason to renew a membership.
The zoo has framed 2026 as its "mountain of memories" year, with a public invitation for guests and members to submit photos and written stories, a historic photo re-creation contest for adults, and a weeklong Giraffe Center grand opening tucked into the summer schedule.
The August Rhythm Is Quieter Than the Fourth, and Better
Locals who fled to Elevenmile over the Fourth already know the neighborhood's real sweet spot is the back half of summer. This year that stretch has more structure than usual.
The zoo has scheduled Dog Days on a specific set of dates when a ticketed, well-behaved dog can accompany the family through most of the property:
- Friday, August 7
- Friday, August 21
- Wednesday, August 26
- Friday, September 4
- Wednesday, September 23
If you have a golden with hip trouble, the Wednesday dates are the ones to circle. Weekday crowds thin fast after 2 p.m., the Mountaineer Sky Ride line shortens, and Grizzly Grill has actual outdoor seating available.
Two other zoo dates matter for residents even if you are not going. Military Appreciation Week runs September 14 through 20, with a 50 percent discount for active-duty, veteran, and retired military and dependents. And a 200-drone show tied to the centennial has been announced as a late-evening event that launches from a higher point than the zoo's usual drone programming and is visible from well beyond the parking lot. If you are on a west-facing patio anywhere between Mesa Avenue and Old Broadmoor, you probably do not need a ticket to catch it.
The Resort's Own Calendar, Read Sideways
The Broadmoor's late-summer and fall lineup is unusually front-loaded with intimate dinners rather than the wide-format holiday brunches that dominate the shoulder season. Three that residents can walk or short-drive to:
The Jefferson's Bourbon Dinner in the Penrose Room on Thursday, August 20 pairs a curated flight with a tasting menu and, per the resort's own event page, keeps the maker in the room. Colorado's only Forbes Five-Star, AAA Five Diamond dining room is not usually the easy Tuesday reservation. A themed maker dinner is a rare way in without a special occasion attached.
The Dundee Hills wine dinner, also in the Penrose Room, follows on Monday, September 14, opening with a 6 p.m. welcome reception. If Willamette Valley pinot noir at 2,000-plus feet of Oregon basalt geology is the kind of sentence that means something to you, it is on the calendar.
For a lighter night, La Taverne runs a live orchestra Friday through Sunday evenings in the main tavern room, and the airy Le Jardin room with its 16-foot chandelier is often bookable on the same night the main room is not. Play at The Broadmoor keeps its six bowling lanes and shuffleboard running late; the reservation quirk is that bowling lanes book separately from dining, which trips up more than a few first-time locals.
Café Julie's, the resort's Parisian-style patisserie with the in-house chocolate kitchen and Lavazza program, remains the most under-used amenity for people who actually live in the zip code. It is a legitimate coffee-and-work spot on a Tuesday morning.
The Two Weekends the Neighborhood Learns to Route Around
Two events on the resort side of the calendar reshape traffic for residents without directly involving the resort's dining rooms.
Colorado Springs Comic Con, August 21 through 23, takes over the Broadmoor World Arena. This year's guest list includes Mick Foley and Marisa Tomei, and weekend passes start at $134. Translation for residents: World Arena parking fills by mid-morning Saturday, and the Lake Avenue and Circle Drive approach gets slower than a typical August weekend. If you have been meaning to try the Golden Bee for a Saturday lunch, book a Sunday morning instead.
Labor Day Lift Off runs September 5 through 7 at Memorial Park, with balloons up at dawn. It is not in the neighborhood, but it pulls traffic north early on all three mornings and then feeds a long, slow return south on Nevada and I-25 in the evenings. If you are booking a dinner at Summit or La Taverne any of those nights, aim for 7:30 or later. A quieter secondary benefit: the zoo tends to be one of the least-crowded major attractions in Colorado Springs on the Sunday and Monday of Lift Off weekend, because the visiting crowd is downtown.
October Arrives Faster This Year
Boo at the Zoo takes back most of the second half of October on the evenings of October 16, 17, 23 through 25, 30, and 31, running 4 to 8:30 p.m. Advance timed tickets are required, and the zoo has been open about the fact that Sundays sell out first for the young-family audience. If you have older kids who prefer a less-costumed evening, Friday October 30 tends to be the most navigable date.
Then the calendar hands the hill back to the resort. Electric Safari runs nightly December 2 through January 1 with 85 light sculptures across more than 50 acres, and the Penrose Room's Patrimony Estate wine dinner sits on December 15 for anyone who wants a quieter reason to walk the long lakeside path in the cold.
Why This Matters if You Actually Live Here
The thing worth naming out loud is that most write-ups of a Cheyenne Mountain Zoo centennial or a Broadmoor fall calendar are aimed at visitors. They tell you what to book. They do not tell you what to route around, when Wednesdays are better than Fridays, or which resort dinner is a rare open door versus a standing calendar item.
A neighborhood that sits between a Forbes Five-Star resort and America's only mountain zoo is unusual to begin with. In a year when the zoo is spending its centennial on a physical redesign that will define the next several decades of the guest experience, and the resort is running an intimate-format dining season alongside it, the practical value of living at the base of that hill is higher than usual. It is also a year worth documenting for anyone who tracks how the character of a specific block, not just a city, evolves.
If you are thinking about your own place on that map, whether that is refinancing into a longer stay, weighing a move up the hill, or quietly measuring what a well-positioned home on this side of the mountain is worth right now, that is a conversation worth having with an advisor who lives the same calendar you do. Curtis Ryan Group works with Broadmoor-area owners on exactly that question. Schedule a consultation when the timing is yours.
