Longmont with kids: the museum, the leisure pool, the library, the lakes and the greenway

Longmont’s places for children sit along two lines: Quail Road, where the museum and the main recreation center stand, and St. Vrain Creek, where the City has strung ponds, nature areas and a float course along eight miles of greenway. This fall both have something new. Here is what there is, with the hours and prices each operator publishes.

The museum: DreamLab

The Longmont Museum at 400 Quail Road (303-651-8374) reopens its galleries after an expansion with a free Grand Reopening Celebration on Saturday, October 17, from 9 to 5: a ribbon-cutting at 9, then tours, talks and samples of Discovery Days with a puppet theater and a craft to take home. The children’s gallery closes for cleaning from 11 to 11:20 and 2 to 2:20. Until the reopening the building opens only for program hours.

The new gallery, DreamLab in Lila’s Children’s Gallery, is a permanent hands-on exhibit in five parts: Lilypad Landing for getting moving, the Deep Sea Diner for pretend play, the Dragon Sky Castle under a 17-foot dragon, the Mushroom Forest for making up and staging stories, and the Crystal Cave, a calm sensory space. The museum lists it at $12 for adults and $5 for children, free for members.

For ages 2 to 6 with an adult, Discovery Days are drop-in art, music and movement sessions at 9:15, 10:45 and 1, music on Tuesdays and art Wednesday to Saturday. They cost $2.75 a person ($2.50 for members) for everyone 2 and up, need no registration and take 40 people a session. They are canceled when St. Vrain Valley Schools calls off in-person school, and on district late-start and no-school days, such as Friday, October 16, they open to children up to 11. Teenagers 13 to 18 have a free craft club on Tuesdays from 3 to 5 through December 8.

The library

The Longmont Public Library at 355 Emery Street (303-651-8470) is open 9 to 8 Monday to Thursday, 9 to 5 Friday and Saturday and 1 to 5 on Sunday. Storytimes run Monday to Saturday in the meeting rooms by the Kimbark Street entrance, with no registration, and a caregiver stays in the room: bilingual English-Spanish on Mondays at 10 (birth to 5), toddlers (2 to 3) on Tuesdays at 10, babies (birth to 2) on Wednesdays at 10, yoga or craft storytime on alternate Thursdays at 10, and all ages (birth to 5) on Fridays at 10 and Saturdays at 11. The children’s desk (303-651-8477) runs Longmont Growing Readers, which sends 100 books to the homes of 4-year-olds in the 80501, 80503 and 80504 postal codes. Adult residents with a library card can reserve free or discounted Discovery Passes to places such as the Butterfly Pavilion, Fiske Planetarium and the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, twice a year for each.

Pools and the Recreation Center

The City runs two indoor pools open all year and three outdoor ones for summer. The Longmont Recreation Center at 310 Quail Road (303-774-4800), open 5 am to 9 pm on weekdays and 7 to 5 at weekends, has a leisure pool with a lazy river and two big slides, and since this fall a new play structure in the shallow end: three more slides, dumping buckets, sprayers children can aim, water tables and two toddler features. The leisure pool reopened on Friday, October 2, and the City cuts the ribbon on it on Saturday, October 10, at 11. All-ages hours are 10 to 1 and 4 to 7 on Monday and Wednesday, 9 to 7 on Tuesday and Thursday (no slides or features during lessons from 9 to 11 and 4 to 6), 10 to 7 on Friday, 9 to 4:30 on Saturday and 11 to 4:30 on Sunday, with the slides on from 11. Children 5 and under need someone 14 or older in the water with them, and children 6 to 8 need one on the deck.

A day visit to the Recreation Center or Centennial Pool is free under 2, $6 for ages 2 to 10, $6.50 for 11 to 17 and $7.75 for adults, for residents ($7.50, $8 and $9.50 for everyone else). Centennial Pool at 1201 Alpine Street (303-651-8406), in Clark Centennial Community Park, has six lanes, a diving well with two 1-meter boards, a shallow pool for small children and an upstairs room, the Fishbowl, for watching lessons.

The outdoor pools are closed for the season; Sunset Pool at 1900 Longs Peak Avenue, with two slides, diving boards and a sandy beach play area, stayed open through September 13 this year. The two activity pools are for small children. Kanemoto, at 1151 South Pratt Parkway, is for 10 and under, with a zero-depth entry, a small slide and a 4-foot deep end; Roosevelt, at 903 8th Avenue in Roosevelt Park, is for 8 and under, with dumping buckets, a spray garden and nothing deeper than 2 feet 8 inches. Either is $4 a visit for residents aged 1 and up ($5 for non-residents).

Winter: the Ice Pavilion and Itty Bitty City

The Longmont Ice Pavilion, an outdoor rink under the pavilion in Roosevelt Park at 725 8th Avenue (303-774-4777), opens for the season on Friday, November 20, from 1 to 6, with public skating, hockey and lessons through the winter, weather permitting. For the 2025–26 season a drop-in skate, rental skates included, was $6 for residents aged 2 and 3, $11 for ages 4 to 17 and $12 for adults. On Friday mornings from 9 to 11 the gym at the St. Vrain Memorial Building, 700 Longs Peak Avenue, becomes Itty Bitty City, a playtime with toys for ages 6 months to 5 years at $5 a child (303-651-8404), with parents supervising.

Playgrounds and splash pads

Neighborhood parks are open from an hour before sunrise to an hour after sunset. Stephen Day Neighborhood Park, 1340 Deerwood Drive, is built on a voyager theme, with sunken-ship berms round the playground, a maze and a spray ground that runs in the summer months. Fox Meadows Neighborhood Park, 636 Deerwood Drive, completed in 2025, has separate playgrounds for ages 2 to 5 and 5 to 12 and an 82-foot zipline. Sandstone Ranch, 3001 Colorado Highway 119, a mile east of County Line Road, has an adventure playground where climbing, digging, splashing and spinning are encouraged, a spray feature, a skate park and a fishing pond, and free programs at its Visitors & Learning Center in the historic house.

Dickens Farm Nature Area, on Boston Avenue between Main and Martin streets, has an accessible nature playground, a beginner bike skills trail, slower-moving water play areas and a free float course on St. Vrain Creek for tubes, kayaks and paddleboards: 0.6 miles from Main Street to a takeout east of Martin Street, or 1.5 miles to the 119th Street trailhead. Floaters bring their own craft, and the City says entering the creek is at your own risk. Clark Centennial and Garden Acres Community Park, 2058 Spencer Street, both list accessible playgrounds.

Lakes, ponds and the greenway

McIntosh Lake, 1929 Harvard Street, has a 3.5-mile trail round the water and a spur to the Agricultural Heritage Center. Swimming is not allowed; carry-on boats and paddleboards are, with a life jacket for everyone aboard, and the City’s rules say children 12 and under must wear theirs the whole time. Union Reservoir, 461 County Road 26, has a playground, a fishing pier and a swim beach, now closed for the season. Entry is $10 a vehicle ($15 on summer weekends and holidays) or $2 on foot or by bike, and it is open 6 am to 8 pm through October (closing at 6 pm on October 14), then 7 to 6.

Golden Ponds, 2651 3rd Avenue, has four fishing ponds open to all ages, 2.6 miles of trail and an accessible fishing pier. The 15.7-acre pond at Izaak Walton Nature Area, 18 South Sunset Street, is for children only: they may use live bait and keep fish to the state limit, parents may help but not fish, and children 15 and under need no state license. The City’s pages differ on the age limit, 15 and younger on the fishing-program page and 14 and under on the nature area’s. That program, the annual Chick Clark Kids’ Fishing Program, began in 2003 and gives registered children a free rod and reel after lessons in fish identification, knots and casting.

The St. Vrain Greenway ties them together: about 8 miles of paved and gravel path from Golden Ponds to Sandstone Ranch, past Roger’s Grove, where the apples are free to pick, Izaak Walton and Dickens Farm. Dogs are banned on the last mile, from the County Line trailhead to Sandstone Ranch, and some stretches damaged in the 2013 flood are still being rebuilt; closures are on the City’s Trail Status Map.

The farm: Agricultural Heritage Center

Boulder County’s Agricultural Heritage Center, 8348 Ute Highway, is the homestead George McIntosh claimed in 1868, presented as a farm of 1900 to 1925, and admission is free. From April 1 to October 31 it is open Friday to Sunday, 10 to 5; from November to March, only on the first Saturday of the month, so after October 31 the next opening is November 7. Chickens, pigs, draft horses and sheep are there from April through October, with a furnished 1909 farmhouse, two barns and an heirloom garden, and Nature Detectives mystery guides for children are on site from Memorial Day through October. Picnics are welcome, pets are not, and the buildings and trails are wheelchair accessible. The County’s Pella Crossing open space has two easy trail systems, of 1.8 and 1.1 miles, and fishing ponds where swimming and wading are not allowed.

The City’s family calendar

The Day of the Dead Family Celebration, on Saturday, October 24, from 11 to 3, is a free street festival downtown at 4th Avenue and Kimbark Street with music, dance, face painting, sugar-skull decorating, a kids’ play zone and a procession of gigantes; the museum dates it to 2001 and calls it the longest-running in Colorado. On Halloween, Saturday, October 31, the costume parade lines up at Roosevelt Park at 9:30 and sets off down Main Street at 10, with Trick-or-Treat Street at Main Street businesses afterward and no registration. On Saturday, December 12, the Longmont Lights parade of lit floats comes down Main Street at 5, and the lights in Roosevelt Park are on nightly from late November into early January. Earlier in 2026 there were an underwater Easter egg hunt at the Recreation Center, a balance-bike race for preschoolers and a Glow Swim at Sunset Pool. Events with published dates are on the events page.