Things to do outside in Broomfield with toddlers

The Bay Aquatic Park

Broomfield's outdoor aquatic park is the one place in town built for small children to get in the water, and it is the summer-only splurge on this list. Alongside the big leisure pool there is a separate toddler pool with its own small slides and a ground-spray sprayground, so a two-year-old is not competing with teenagers on the body slides. Entry is cheap if you have a Broomfield Resident ID and children three and under are free with a paying adult, but everyone needs a pre-purchased session ticket through B-REx, so this is a plan-ahead outing rather than a spontaneous one. It runs late May through Labor Day and closes between sessions, so check the schedule before you load the car.

Community Park

If you only learn one park in Broomfield, make it this one. Community Park is the 41-acre block wrapped around the city and county building downtown, and it holds four separate playgrounds, so you can walk to a different one when your toddler gets bored of the first. There is a pond to look at, an outdoor pool, a covered shelter with a restroom, and a skate park that small children will happily stand and watch for twenty minutes. Parking is off-street and plentiful, which matters when you are unloading a stroller.

Broomfield County Commons Park

The Commons is Broomfield's biggest outdoor space, a 300-acre site that wraps the Paul Derda Recreation Center and includes a huge sports complex and hundreds of acres of open space with trails. For a toddler the draw is two playgrounds plus a pavilion and five picnic huts, so there is shade and somewhere to sit with a snack. Restrooms are permanent rather than portable, and you can park in the recreation center lot and walk in. Weekends can be busy with youth sports on the fields, which is either good entertainment or a parking headache depending on your mood.

Midway Park

Midway is the park to pick when you want something a little different from a standard play structure: the north section has a sensory playground, built for children who want texture, sound and movement rather than a tall slide. It also has a stream, a pond, trails, a shelter with restrooms and a big grassy area, so a visit can be a whole morning rather than twenty minutes. The park runs in three separate sections either side of Midway Boulevard, so it is worth knowing which one you are aiming for before you park. It is also where Broomfield Days is held each year.

Bronco Park

Bronco Park is the heart of the Westlake neighborhood and the pick on this list for families who like reading together: it has a StoryWalk, where the pages of a picture book are posted along a path so a small child gets a story and a walk at the same time. The park is a manageable 4.37 acres with a playground, a shelter with a restroom, picnic tables and a barbeque grill, and the trail across the open space leads to a pond. It is a neighborhood park rather than a destination, which is exactly why it works with a toddler: you can see the whole thing from one bench.

Quail Creek Park

Quail Creek is a ten-acre park in north Broomfield with the combination that makes a toddler morning easy: a playground, a covered picnic shelter, permanent restrooms and its own off-street parking. The distinctive part is the wetland alongside it, which the city describes as great for bird watching, so there are herons and ducks to point at when the swings run out. Trails connect it into Broomfield's wider trail system, and it sits just north of the King Soopers at 136th and Zuni if you need to pick something up on the way home.

Broomfield Industrial Park

Do not be put off by the name: this is an eleven-acre ballfield park in south Broomfield, and the reason to bring a small child is the Miniature Rockies Field, a scaled-down ballpark that delights kids far too young to play on it. There is a playground, an inline skate rink, picnic tables, a shelter with a restroom and a good off-street lot. It is a sports park first, so the atmosphere depends on whether a game is on; on a quiet weekday morning you will have the playground to yourselves.

Northmoor Park

Northmoor is an eight-acre neighborhood park in central Broomfield and the home of Bal Swan School, so it is a corner of town used to small children. It has a playground, a shelter with a restroom, picnic tables, a barbeque grill and a good spread of courts and fields for older siblings. Parking is unusually easy: there is a lot plus street parking on all four sides of the park, which is a small thing that matters a lot when you are wrangling a car seat. The variety is the point here rather than any one headline feature.

Anthem Community Park

Anthem sits on the high northern edge of Broomfield with a long view to the Front Range, and it is the place to take a toddler who has just graduated to a balance bike: the city built an asphalt pump track and dirt jumps here, and the smooth paved track is genuinely rideable by a confident three-year-old while older kids use the jumps. Beyond the track there is a large shelter, permanent restrooms, a barbeque grill and a medium-sized parking lot. Shade is limited once you leave the shelter, so it is a morning or late-afternoon park in high summer.

McKay Lake Nature Play Area

This is the most imaginative outdoor space in Broomfield and the one with the biggest caveat. The nature play area is built almost entirely from logs and rope, with tunnels, bridges, boulders and hills instead of a moulded plastic structure, and toddlers love it. The catch, as the local family blog Slides and Sunshine puts it, is that under-sixes will disappear from view constantly, so this is a follow-them-around park rather than a sit-on-a-bench park. It shares a site with Broomfield's four-acre bike park and the 1.6-mile McKay Lake loop trail, there is very little shade, and the only toilet is a portable one near the Zuni parking lot.

Trails at Westlake

Twenty acres of wide grass with paths winding through it and around a pond, which is close to the ideal shape for a toddler walk: flat, open, and with ducks at the end of it. There is a playground and a covered picnic shelter, and the park sits on both sides of Trails Avenue so there is more of it than you first see. The city lists no restroom here, so it is a shorter outing than Community Park or the Commons unless you plan around that.

Discovery Park

A four-acre neighborhood park with an idea built into it: the east side holds a walk-through model of the solar system, with the planets spread across the park at distances that stand in for their real distance from the sun. A toddler will not care about the astronomy, but they will happily run from planet to planet, which turns a plain walk into a game. There is a playground, a covered picnic shelter and picnic tables. The park straddles Kohl Street, and there is no restroom listed.

Lac Amora Park

Lac Amora has the best view of any playground on this list, looking straight west at the Front Range, which makes the hour you spend pushing a swing considerably more pleasant. The play area includes a playhouse with a toy stovetop and windows, the kind of thing a two-year-old will occupy themselves with far longer than a slide. There is a covered picnic shelter, picnic tables, a barbeque grill and trails, and the Lake Link Trail starts across the street. No restroom is listed, so treat it as a shorter stop.

Zang Spur Park

Zang Spur is eleven acres of playground, courts and open grass, but the reason to bring a small child is the history tucked into it: the Broomfield Depot Museum sits in the park, and so does the grave of Shep, the stray dog who lived at the Denver-Boulder Turnpike toll booth in the 1950s and became the highway's unofficial mascot. A toddler will not follow the story, but a dog's headstone and an old railway depot are good things to walk to. A trail runs under Highway 287 to Broomfield Marketplace. The toilet here is a portable one.

Country Estates Park

Seven and a half acres in north Broomfield with the full neighborhood-park kit: playground, covered picnic shelter, picnic tables, trails, open grass and its own parking lot. The feature that sets it apart is the inline skate rink, a big flat boarded surface that is wonderful for a toddler on a scooter or a first tricycle when nobody is skating on it. The toilet is a portable one rather than a building, which is worth knowing before a long visit.

Broadlands West Park

The playground here was rebuilt recently and it is a climbing playground: rope nets and ladders, a curved climbing wall and a rope bridge. Slides and Sunshine, who reviewed it, is blunt that it suits older kids and more adventurous littles, so a cautious two-year-old will get less out of the structure than a four-year-old will. What makes it work anyway with a toddler in tow is everything around it: a large pavilion with grills and six or more tables, a big grass area, a portable restroom by the parking lot and an off-street lot. It is the pick if you are bringing a toddler and an older sibling at once.

Outlook Park

A five-acre neighborhood park at the north end of Main Street with a playground, a covered picnic shelter, picnic tables, a barbeque grill and off-street parking. The quiet advantage for a toddler is the sand volleyball pit, which on an ordinary weekday is simply the largest sandbox in Broomfield and will absorb a small child for as long as you are willing to sit there. Bring a bucket. The toilet is a portable one.