Hundreds of volunteers sack mountains of trash on miles of Eagle County roadways
Community Pride Highway Cleanup draws some 800 volunteers
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
The numbers alone are impressive — thousands of pounds of trash removed from dozens of miles of roadway in Eagle County over the weekend.
But the number that’s the most encouraging is the fact that some 800 people got together to do it.
The Eagle River Coalition, with its three-person staff, organizes the Community Pride Highway Cleanup, which is now in its 24th year.
The bulk of the work took place over 3-4 hours on Saturday morning, but the event itself has evolved into a several-day affair in recent years.
Melanie Smith with the Eagle River Coalition said a town of Vail event on Thursday helped get people in the cleaning spirit, including kids from Red Sandstone Elementary who also participated. Then on Friday, many groups from the Community Pride Highway Cleanup started cleaning their sections to get a head start. The main event took place on Saturday morning, and on Sunday, crews from the Colorado Department of Transportation and Vail Honeywagon will take to the roads to dispose of the bags of trash left alongside the roads by volunteers.
Support Local Journalism
“It’s blossomed into a four-day extravaganza,” Smith said.
Many people have been taking part in the cleanup for decades. Tom VanCleave with Edwards Elementary said the Eagle County School District has always encouraged participation. The district’s team, on Saturday, included Michele Moskowitz from Homestake Peak School, Julieta Cavallo from Edwards Elementary, and Guillermo Alvarez Bayon and his son, 13-year-old Tomas Alvarez Bayon from Berry Creek Middle School.
The group said they found an entire car bumper in Dowd Junction, along with many other car parts.
The school district team was one of 61 teams that participated. Teams average between 5 and 30 volunteers, Smith said.
Aleksandra Bojic, who has been living in Eagle County for six years, participated in her first cleanup on Saturday. She said she found lots of car parts, along with many items related to vaping. Her teammate, Kristi Ferraro of Avon, said despite the proliferation of vaping as an alternative to smoking in recent years, she still found lots of evidence of people getting their nicotine fix the old-fashioned way.
“It always surprises me how many cigarette butts I find,” Ferraro said. “Even in an area where throwing your butt out the window can cause a wildfire, people still do it.”
Ferraro said she has participated in many clean-ups over the years, and after taking a few years off she decided to return to the event in 2024 to help Sarah Smith Hymes’ team.
Want the news to come to you? Get the top stories in your inbox every morning. Sign up here: VailDaily.com/newsletter
Ferraro said a combination of world travel and participation in the Community Pride Highway Cleanup always gives her a good feeling about where she lives.
“That’s one thing we all agree on in this country, we don’t like litter,” she said. “We’re so divided, but we all hold that in common.”
Smith said anyone who joined Saturday’s cleanup is welcome to stop by a barbecue at Arrowhead scheduled for the afternoon of Sept. 7, hosted by event sponsor Vail Resorts’ Epic Promise. The event will take place following the Eagle River Coalition’s Eagle River Cleanup, also scheduled for Sept. 7.
