Most Black Forest weekends run on trees and dirt roads. Two weekends in August run on coordinates. If you draw a line between the log building at Shoup and Black Forest Road and the trailhead parking lot four miles east on Burgess, you have traced the axis your whole summer rotates around.
That is not a metaphor for community. It is a scheduling fact. The Biergarten, the Festival, the Saturday market, the horse events, and the shaded loop where you walk it all off the next morning sit on the same two-mile stretch of road. This post maps them in the order you will actually use them.
The Two-Day Anchor at Shoup and Black Forest Road
Friday night and Saturday morning of the same August weekend, the Black Forest Community Center becomes a single continuous event with a bedtime in the middle. The Community Club was chartered in 1929, and the log building it still occupies at the corner of Black Forest and Shoup Roads turns 100 in 2027, which makes 2026 the last year of the pre-centennial cycle. The 2026 theme is Stars, Stripes & Tall Pines.
| When | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Fri Aug 7, 5:00 PM | 8th Annual Black Forest Biergarten Fundraiser with WireWood Station | Black Forest Community Center |
| Sat Aug 8, 6:30 AM onward | Black Forest Festival: pancake breakfast, parade, Outhouse Races, artisan booths, petting zoo, tractor rides | Community Club grounds, Shoup & Black Forest Rd |
The Friday-to-Saturday choreography is the part that outside guides get wrong. The Festival brings a parade, live music, fun demos, and a return of the Outhouse Races, plus the annual Pancake Picnic Breakfast outdoors on Saturday morning, with an artisan and business booth fair, children's games and crafts, a petting zoo, and tractor rides. If you have driven past the log building for years and never stopped, this is the weekend to walk in. Membership is $15 a year, and the club has 224 member families today, which is a small enough number that the person handing you pancakes probably knows the person selling raffle tickets.
Two practical notes. Parking accessibility is limited on Festival day, so if you live within walking or biking distance of Shoup Road, use that. And the whole thing is outdoors, which in an August afternoon at 7,000 feet means sunscreen and a layer for when the shade shifts.
Saturday Mornings Have Their Own Gravity
The rest of the summer, the standing appointment is the Backyard Market. Every Saturday from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, 70-plus vendors set up in Black Forest with farmers, ranchers, select artisans and specialty food vendors, live music from local musicians, food trucks, and a free kids corner activity, with the market selling only Colorado produce. The producers-only rule is the point. This is not a market where a reseller drives down from Denver with California peaches. If it is on a table, someone within a few hours of you grew it, raised it, or made it.
For residents, the useful reframe is not "market as event" but "market as grocery shift." You are not making a special trip. You are moving one week's worth of produce and meat purchases from a Powers-corridor big-box to a lot four minutes from your driveway, with coffee and live music thrown in. If you go three Saturdays in a row you will start recognizing vendors, and by the fourth they will remember what you bought last time.
The Four-Mile Loop That Resets the Week
The trail you want after a Festival Saturday is Black Forest Section 16, and it is worth being specific about which one. This is not the City's Section 16 park on the west side of Colorado Springs, which is the one that shows up when you type "Section 16" into a mapping app. The one you want is off Burgess Road.
Just off Burgess Road, this 90-acre property features a 4-mile loop trail through towering ponderosa pine and open meadows, and the wide, mostly level path is ideal for hikers, runners, cyclists, families, and equestrians. The loop covers 3.9 miles with 249 feet of elevation gain and takes about an hour to an hour and a half to complete. Two details that matter more than the mileage:
Arrive before 6:30 AM on a summer Saturday and you may be the second car in the lot. Arrive at 8:00 and there will be twenty. There are benches along the loop with clear Pikes Peak views, and a vault toilet at the trailhead.
Parking is at the main lot off Burgess Road near the intersection with Shoup Road, and it is equestrian friendly. That last part is not a footnote. If you meet a horse on the trail, step off the path on the downhill side and let them pass. It is the local etiquette, and Section 16 sees enough riders that you will get the chance to practice it.
If the four miles of Section 16 are not enough, the larger Black Forest Regional Park is a few minutes away and has its own web of trails. Black Forest Regional Park is one of Colorado Springs' most scenic and popular outdoor spaces, and the entire park comprises 385 acres. The onsite maps and trail markers refer to white, orange and yellow loops, and combined, all three loops are 4 miles long, with distances varying depending on where you access the trailheads. The two parks together give you an easy way to alternate routes across a summer without repeating yourself.
One July Weekend the Community Calendar Hides
Before you get to August, there is a Saturday in late July that only registers if you know to look. On Saturday, July 25, 2026, the Kit Carson Riding Club hosts its 12th Annual Ranch Horse Roundup starting at 7:00 AM. If you own horses, you already have this on your calendar. If you do not, it is one of the few chances all summer to watch working ranch horse events in the neighborhood without driving to Elbert or Calhan. Bring a folding chair and go early. The July light on the arena is worth being there for even if you cannot tell a reining pattern from a working cow class.
Where the Evening Lands
When the Festival crowd thins and the market packs up, two places carry the rest of the day.
Black Forest Brewing Company is at 11590 Black Forest Road, Suite 50, which puts it a few minutes south of the Community Center on the same road. It opened March 22, 2018 with the mission to become the local place where everyone can come together and celebrate everyday life. It is family-friendly, dog-friendly on the patio, and runs a standing weekly rhythm that is worth memorizing: trivia nights on Wednesdays, run club on Thursday. The kitchen leans German-inspired with rotating food trucks in the lot. If you have out-of-town family visiting the Festival weekend, this is the least-friction dinner spot within the neighborhood proper. There is also a second location, East Tap Room, in Falcon if you find yourself on that side of Highway 24.
For a slower evening, Black Forest Bistro sits at 6750 Shoup Road, half a mile from the Community Center along the same road you walked the parade on. The Bistro is in a historic building in the Forest and specializes in bistro fare with an international twist, along with craft cocktails, local beer and a wine list. They run a Thursday prix-fixe menu that is the closest thing the neighborhood has to a standing date night. Reservations are the move. The dining room is small enough that walk-ins on a Saturday evening in August are a gamble.
Between the two, you have covered the Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday arc without leaving a two-mile radius.
The Coordinates, One More Time
If you keep only one thing from this post, keep the geography. Shoup Road runs east and west. Black Forest Road runs north and south. They meet at the log building your neighborhood was arguably built around. Burgess Road cuts east off Black Forest Road a few minutes north, and it ends at the trailhead that resets your legs. Everything you need in an August weekend, from pancakes at 7:00 AM to a pint at 8:00 PM, sits inside that box.
That is the difference between living in Black Forest and driving through it. The map is small. The calendar is short. You just have to be on it.
If you or someone you know is thinking about buying, selling, or investing in a home somewhere on this map, The Daniels Team has worked Black Forest and the wider Pikes Peak region for more than three decades. Schedule a free consultation and we will trade notes on the neighborhood over coffee.
