Six weeks ago, the Anythink Nature Library opened at 6811 E. 136th Ave. with boulders to climb, a mud pit churning with hand pumps, and more than 5,000 people through the doors on a single Saturday. The photos from that day are still circulating on Colorado social media: kids scrambling over rocks indoors, a dark room glowing like a planetarium, families hauling home borrowed hammocks and wildlife cameras like it was the world's best-stocked outdoor gear shop.
If you're a Thornton resident deciding whether to finally make the drive out to 136th and Newport, that opening-day version is the one you've probably seen. It's not quite the one you'll get.
The mud pit is closed. The trail doesn't connect to anything yet. And the crowd math has changed enough that the library itself has been quietly asking people to change how they show up. None of that makes the place less worth visiting. It just means the actual current state is a different story than the one that went viral, and it's the one nobody's written yet.
What Made It a Story in the First Place
Anythink calls this the nation's first public library built entirely around nature, and the claim holds up on paper. The 33,000-square-foot building sits on a 15-acre campus next to Thornton's 140-acre Aylor Open Lands, and instead of the usual stacks and study carrels, it runs on what the library system calls the Environmental Kinship Model, an approach built around letting people engage directly with the outdoors rather than just reading about it.
The gear library is the part that got the most attention, and deservedly so. At opening, the branch carried roughly 550 items across 65 collections, from GPS units and night-vision goggles to sleeping bags, wildlife trail cameras, and hammocks, all available with a standard library card. Any Colorado resident can register, not just Adams County taxpayers, which is part of why the branch pulled visitors from as far as Highlands Ranch in its first days.
Executive director Mark Fink has described the goal as removing the barriers that keep people, especially kids, from getting dirty and curious about the outdoors. The building backs that up architecturally: a dark room with star-simulating lights and a Shou Sugi Ban wood treatment that smells faintly like campfire, an indoor boulder path, and a sunroom built for quiet reading. It's an ambitious building, and the opening-week coverage captured that ambition accurately.
What that coverage didn't capture, because it was written before the crowds settled in, is what the place looks like now that the ribbon-cutting is a month and a half behind it.
The Version You'll Actually Find This Week
Here's where the reporting from August and the reality of a September visit start to diverge.
| Feature | Opening Day (Aug. 8) | Status as of Late September |
|---|---|---|
| Mud pit | Fully operational, described as "teeming" with kids | Closed for maintenance, no announced reopening date |
| Exterior loop trail | One mile, framed as a preview of a larger network | Same one-mile loop, still not connected to Aylor's regional trails |
| Parking | Adequate for a planned opening crowd | Overwhelmed within days, prompting the library to ask visitors to carpool or bike |
| TryIts gear collection | ~550 items across 65 collections | Same inventory, with plans to grow toward 1,500 items over time |
| Indoor spaces (dark room, boulders, sunroom) | Fully open | Fully open, unaffected by outdoor closures |
The mud pit closure is the one most families will notice first, since it was arguably the single most photographed feature of opening day. Anythink's own FAQ page for the branch confirms it's closed for maintenance with no reopening timeline given, just a note asking visitors to check back for updates. That's a normal thing for a brand-new outdoor feature to need after weeks of heavy use, but it means the experience you've seen in every listicle photo isn't currently available.
The parking situation is the other real shift. Within a week of opening, the Northglenn-Thornton Sentinel reported that library officials were emailing patrons to manage the crowds, noting that the lot was filling up throughout much of the day and encouraging people to bike, carpool, or visit during off-peak hours. If you're picturing the wide-open, easy-access branch library experience, adjust that expectation for at least the near term, particularly on weekends.
Why the Trail Doesn't Go Where the Renderings Suggested
This is the part that's easy to miss if you're only skimming the opening-week headlines. The one-mile loop trail behind the library is real and open now, and it's genuinely pleasant, cutting through prairie grassland with learning stations that were set up for the grand opening. But it's a loop, not a connector. It doesn't currently link to the broader trail system of the adjacent Aylor Open Lands.
That connection is coming, but not this year. According to reporting from Outside magazine, Anythink's director of external relations RyAnne Scott said the exterior loop is expected to connect to Aylor's regional trails by 2027, complete with outdoor bathrooms designed to make the branch a rest stop for hikers and bikers passing through. Anythink's own site confirms the City of Thornton plans to restore Aylor to native prairie and finish installing its trail systems by the end of 2027.
For anyone imagining a straight shot from the library onto a wider network of North Metro trails, that's roughly a year and a half away. What exists today is a contained, mile-long walk, not a gateway hike.
When to Actually Go
If you want the calmer version of this place rather than the opening-day crush, a few adjustments help based on what's been reported since August:
- Weekday mornings are your best bet. The branch is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Sundays, which gives you a wide window to avoid Saturday peak hours.
- Bike or carpool if you're going on a weekend. The library's own request to patrons wasn't a suggestion so much as an acknowledgment that the lot can't handle full Saturday demand yet.
- Skip the mud pit trip for now. If that specific feature is the draw for your family, call ahead or check Anythink's site before making the drive, since there's no confirmed reopening date.
- Everything indoors is unaffected. The dark room, the boulder scramble, the sunroom, and the full TryIts gear counter have been running since day one and aren't tied to the outdoor maintenance closure.
What's Still Genuinely Worth the Drive
None of this is a case against visiting. The gear library alone is a real find for anyone in Thornton who camps, birds, gardens, or just wants to try snowshoeing before buying a pair. Borrowing a wildlife camera or a GPS unit for a weekend, free with a library card, isn't something most branches in the metro offer, and the 550-item collection is described by Anythink as just the starting point toward a longer-term goal of 1,500 items.
The building itself also holds up on a normal Tuesday the way it did on opening day, since the indoor experience was never dependent on the crowd or the mud pit. If you're weighing when to go, the honest answer is that the calmer, less-photographed version of this place, the one without 5,000 people and a fully staffed opening-day program, might actually be the better visit.
Thornton doesn't add a project like this often, and the fact that it's drawing families in from other parts of the metro says something about what's been missing in the North Metro's mix of public spaces. Whether or not the mud pit reopens by winter, the branch itself is a genuine addition to how people in this part of Adams County spend a free Saturday.
If you're already living in Thornton and keeping an eye on what's changing around you, from new civic investments like this one to the housing that continues to fill in around them, Johnny Lee tracks those shifts closely as part of working this market day to day. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's happening in the neighborhood or a straightforward valuation on your own home.
