For more than two decades, the third week of September meant the same thing at American Legion Post 55 on North Railroad Street: trailers backed into the gravel lot before sunrise, ATVs and side-by-sides idling while riders compared notes on which pass had held its color longest. The Buena Vista Chamber of Commerce ran the OHV Fall Color Tour as a self-guided event, but it never felt self-guided. Volunteer outriders staffed the trailheads. Breakfast was waiting at the Legion hall three mornings running. Friday night ended with a catered dinner, live music, and a photo contest judged in front of the whole crowd. As of its 22nd year in 2023, riders could still choose between a $140 registration that covered three breakfasts and a Friday dinner, or a $150 upgrade that added Saturday morning too.
This September, nobody is setting up that registration table.
What the Chamber Actually Said
The change didn't happen with an announcement. It happened the quiet way most local traditions end: a volunteer role went unfilled, then unfilled again. The Chamber's own event page for the tour lays it out plainly. In 2024, the people who had organized the routes and the festivities for years stepped back, and the Chamber never found anyone to replace them.
"We know people are really sad to see this event go."
That's the Chamber's own language, still posted on their site. What's left in its place is intentionally small: a casual breakfast, a casual happy hour, an open invitation to show up, order your own food, and swap stories with other fall color regulars. No routes. No outriders. No registration fee. Just a time and a place, announced closer to the date.
If you rode this tour in past years, or if you've simply heard your neighbors talk about it every September since you moved here, that's the update you haven't seen written down anywhere else: the organized version of Buena Vista's fall color tradition isn't coming back this year, and nobody at the Chamber is pretending otherwise.
The Roads Didn't Close. The Support Did.
Here's the part that actually matters if you still want to see the color: everything the tour used to run through is still open to you. You just do it without a safety net.
Cottonwood Pass is the easiest starting point and it needs no OHV permit at all. Head west out of town on County Road 306 and you're climbing toward a paved summit at 12,126 feet, the highest paved crossing of the Continental Divide in the country. The route mixes high aspen groves with cottonwoods lower on the valley floor, so you get two color palettes on one drive, and any two-wheel-drive car can handle it comfortably.
For the backcountry loop that made the old tour worth the drive, you're looking at the same ground riders have used for years: start at the ghost town of St. Elmo, climb Hancock Pass past 12,000 feet, detour along the old railroad grade to the Alpine Tunnel site, the first bore ever cut through the Continental Divide, then continue down through Pitkin before climbing back out over Cumberland Pass into Tin Cup. From there the return trip passes Mirror Lake at 11,000 feet and crosses Tin Cup Pass, putting you over the Divide twice in a single day.
None of that requires a Chamber-run event to access. What it does require, without the tour, is your own planning:
- A current OHV permit, still legally required on these trails, available at Timberline Motorsports on U.S. 24 for $25.25
- Your own map or GPS track, since there are no volunteer outriders checking on riders at each trailhead anymore
- A riding partner or group, since the built-in safety net of a staffed event is gone
- A plan for high-altitude carburetor issues, since older OHVs can struggle above 11,000 feet without proper jetting
Timing It Yourself This Year
Without a Chamber calendar telling you when to show up, the timing question falls on you too. The pattern holds the same as it always has: elevation drives the schedule. Terrain above 10,000 feet, which covers most of the old tour's route through Hancock and Cumberland Passes, typically turns mid to late September and moves fast once it starts, often finishing its show within about a month. The cottonwoods lower in the valley, the ones you'd see along the Arkansas River right in town, hold their color longer and typically peak later into the season.
That means the smart sequence this year is the same one longtime riders already knew instinctively: hit the high passes first, in the back half of September, then let the valley floor carry you into October if you want a second round without repeating the drive.
What Actually Changed Here
The generic version of this story is easy to find: Buena Vista has pretty aspens, drive Cottonwood Pass, visit St. Elmo, the end. That version was true five years ago and it's true now. It also misses the thing that actually shifted in this town's fall calendar.
What disappeared in 2024 wasn't access to the mountains. It was the structure that turned solo drives into a shared event, the kind of thing where you knew other households across the valley were riding the same loop that weekend, comparing photos over the same Friday dinner. That structure ran on volunteers, and when the volunteers stepped away, nobody picked it back up. The Chamber has said as much themselves, and they've left the door open for anyone willing to organize it again.
Until that happens, Buena Vista's fall still delivers. The passes still turn gold on schedule. St. Elmo is still there, Cottonwood Pass is still paved and free to drive, and Timberline Motorsports still sells the permit you need. What's missing is the version where someone else handled the logistics for you. This year, that part is on you and whoever you bring along.
If you're weighing a move to a place where the community still organizes around things like this, or wondering what it actually feels like to live somewhere the traditions are homegrown enough to disappear when one volunteer role goes unfilled, that's worth a real conversation, not a listing search. Mary Kale has lived in Buena Vista since 2000, long enough to have seen this tour in its full form and to know exactly what it takes to keep something like it running. Reach out if you want a local read on the valley beyond what any drive guide can tell you.
