About This Tour

An easy, flat, three-mile run from Paco Sanchez Park, 1290 Knox Ct., to the Denver Animal Shelter, 1241 W. Bayaud Ave. From Paco Sanchez Park, go east on the Lakewood Gulch Trail until it joins the South Platte River Trail and head south to the Denver Animal Shelter.

The run starts at Carlos Frésquez’s artwork “Que Viva Paco,” in honor of Francisco “Paco” Sanchez, who in 1954 launched Denver’s first Spanish language radio station. The artwork consists of three stainless-steel disks, approximately five feet in diameter, painted in the colors of the United States and Mexican flags.

The run concludes at “Sun Spot,” by the artist team of Haddad | Drugan. The sculpture is made from a structural steel skeleton overlaid with stainless steel mesh covered with more than 90,000 individual stainless steel pet tags. The accumulation of pet tags symbolizes the thousands of pet adoptions that occur at the shelter every year.

Explore and learn more about Denver’s public art collection by enjoying this easy, scenic, three-mile run from “Que Viva Paco” to “Sun Spot” along the Lakewood Gulch and Platte River trials. For more details, view the run on Strava by Public Art Administrator Rudi Cerri.