Walk the loop at Pueblo Montaño on any weekday evening and you'll pass the same cast of characters: a retriever pulling its owner toward the cottonwoods, a couple of kids from Bosque School cutting through on bikes, and Mark Chavez's carved tree trunks standing guard at the trailhead like they have for two decades. One of them, shaped into a defeated dragon, has always been a quiet nod to the firefighters who worked the 2003 blaze that took out roughly 100 acres of this same forest. Another carries La Llorona's story into the wood grain.
What most of the people walking past those sculptures don't know is that the ground just past them is about to change in a way that has nothing to do with a new bench or a repaved path. Tomorrow is the first day of meteorological fall, and it's also the season the City of Albuquerque set as its own target for a very specific kind of work along this stretch of river.
The River You Can Hear But Not See
Pueblo Montaño sits where Montaño Road meets Coors, feeding directly into the Coors Bosque Trail and, just over a mile south, the wider Rio Grande Valley State Park system. It's the practical starting point for anyone in Taylor Ranch or Paradise Hills who wants bosque access without driving across the river first.
Here's the part that's easy to miss on a regular walk: despite the trail running the length of the Rio Grande, you mostly can't see the river from it. The understory along this stretch has grown in thick over the decades, partly around steel structures that were put in place well before most current residents moved to the westside, back when flood control along the Rio Grande meant physically anchoring the riverbank against a channel that used to move on its own. Those structures never left. The vegetation just grew up around them, and now a walk that runs parallel to one of the five longest rivers in the country mostly gives you cottonwoods and glimpses, not water.
What the City Actually Plans To Pull Out
The city's Open Space Division, working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has spent the last year and a half planning exactly what to do about that. The project covers stretches of bosque on the westside and its stated goal is direct: remove those old flood-control structures where it makes sense, and pair the removal with habitat restoration rather than leaving bare ground behind. The stated benefit isn't cosmetic. It's meant to open a few small gaps in the thick riverside growth so people walking the trail can actually see the water again, while also giving birds and pollinators better habitat than a solid wall of overgrown brush provides.
Parks and Recreation Director Dave Simon put it simply when the plan was first announced.
"Protecting the bosque takes sustained effort."
The funding behind it follows the Corps' typical structure for these joint efforts, with local and federal dollars split roughly 35 to 65, which lets the city's own budget stretch further than it would carrying the project alone. Planning has included a public input phase, and the city's own timeline has implementation landing this fall. That's not a season already behind us. It's the one that opens tomorrow.
This Isn't the First Time This Ground Got Reworked
If this all sounds like a lot of upheaval for a neighborhood trail, it helps to remember that this exact stretch of bosque has been rebuilt before. The 2003 fire that killed the cottonwoods Mark Chavez later carved wasn't a footnote. It was a real loss of forest, and the city's response wasn't just to replant and move on. Chavez, a retired Albuquerque firefighter, turned the standing dead trees into sculpture rather than clearing them, so the trailhead itself became a record of what the fire took and what came after.
That instinct, restore rather than simply remove, has shown up again and again along this corridor. A sign at the Pueblo Montaño site notes that since 2001, more than 2,000 acres of bosque have been restored by clearing non-native trees and replanting native species. The jetty jack removal fits that same pattern. It's not a new philosophy for this stretch of river. It's the next chapter of one the neighborhood has already lived through once.
What Actually Changes On Your Walk This Winter
Here's where the timing gets interesting for anyone who already uses this trail regularly. Bald Eagles winter along this same stretch of river, close enough that the parking area for the connected Aldo Leopold Forest Trail sits right at Pueblo Montaño. Most winters, spotting one means catching a silhouette through bare branches at the right moment. If the city's plan opens even a few small gaps in the vegetation this same season, that silhouette gets a lot easier to catch.
The cooler months bring other regulars into view too. Porcupines show up in the bare canopy overhead, easy to mistake for an oversized nest until you look twice. Coyotes cross the trail often enough that regular walkers barely mention it anymore. If you're willing to extend the ride south toward the Rio Grande Nature Center, a separate but connected piece of this same river system, you'll start seeing sandhill cranes on the pond there as November settles in.
None of this requires the jetty jack removal to actually happen on schedule. The eagles come regardless. But if the vegetation does open up even modestly this fall, this becomes the first winter in years where the view actually matches what the trail has always promised: a walk along the Rio Grande, not just near it.
As of now, there's no announced trail closure tied to this work, and the public input phase suggests the city isn't rushing ahead without giving residents a chance to weigh in first. The most likely outcome for this fall is gradual, not disruptive. You'll notice a cleared patch here, a wider sightline there, long before you'd notice a detour sign.
For a neighborhood that measures its own quality of life partly by how easy it is to get from a cul-de-sac to a cottonwood canopy in under ten minutes, that's worth paying attention to. The trailhead you already use every week is quietly becoming a better version of itself, and the timing means this season is when you'll start to see it.
If you're the kind of person who notices when your own neighborhood changes shape, that's exactly the instinct behind everything we write about Paradise Hills and Taylor Ranch. Momentum Real Estate Group has spent years paying attention to the details that make this side of the city work, from the trails people actually use to the streets people actually want to live on. If you ever want to talk about what's happening in this neighborhood beyond the bosque, we're an easy conversation to start.
