A few miles southwest of town, past the hay fields and ranch fences, the pavement gives out and Red Grade Road starts climbing into the Bighorns. It winds through mixed conifer forest and along a year-round creek, into stands of aspen that start turning gold well before anyone driving up from Dayton has finished their coffee. If you live in Big Horn, this is quite possibly the fastest route to real elevation anywhere in the county.
Everyone else chasing fall color in the Bighorns is doing it the long way. They're staging out of Dayton or Sheridan, booking cabins for the last weekends of September and the first two of October, and committing to a full day on the paved Bighorn Scenic Byway just to reach the aspen groves near Burgess Junction. You can get to the same color without ever setting a tire on U.S. 14.
Two Roads, Two Different Mountains
The Bighorn Scenic Byway is the postcard version of fall in this range, and it earns that reputation. The paved route runs from Dayton through the national forest, past Steamboat Point and Sibley Lake and the limestone blocks of Fallen City, before topping out near Burgess Junction. It's a genuinely spectacular drive. It's also a commitment, and every leaf-peeper in three states knows about it, which is why cabin listings near Sheridan tend to book up first for the final weekends of September and the opening weekends of October.
Red Grade Road runs a different kind of trip. It starts a few miles outside Big Horn, climbs fast on mostly unpaved surface, and drops you into a trail network that most out-of-town visitors have never heard of.
| Red Grade Road | Bighorn Scenic Byway (US-14) | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | A few miles southwest of Big Horn | Dayton |
| Surface | Mostly unpaved county road | Fully paved highway |
| Access from Big Horn | Off Bird Farm Road and Meade Creek Road, a few miles from town | Requires driving out to Dayton first |
| Who's on it | Local hikers, bikers, equestrians using the land trust trails | Statewide and out-of-state color-chasing traffic |
| Season | Road unmaintained roughly mid-December through early April | Open longer, but services thin out once you're on it |
Neither road is better in some abstract sense. But one of them is a drive you already have, and the other is a drive everyone else has to plan around.
Color Moves Downhill, Which Means You Get More Than One Weekend
Fall color in the Bighorns doesn't arrive all at once. It starts high and works its way down as the weeks pass, which means the aspen stands near the top of Red Grade can be past peak while groves lower on the drainage are just turning. For someone staging a single day trip up the byway, that's a gamble. You pick your Saturday, you drive up, and whatever elevation happens to be at its best that day is what you get.
For a Big Horn resident with Red Grade a few miles away, it's not a gamble at all. The trail system sits roughly twenty minutes from Sheridan, which puts it even closer for anyone starting from Big Horn itself. You can drive up on a Wednesday to see how far the color has moved, then go back the following week and catch a different elevation band entirely. That's not a bigger, better trip. It's several smaller ones, spaced out over a month, that add up to more actual color than most visitors will see on their one carefully planned Saturday.
What You're Actually Driving Into
The Red Grade Trail System sits on a mix of Wyoming State land, Bureau of Land Management parcels, and Bighorn National Forest, and it's maintained by the Sheridan Community Land Trust, a nonprofit that funds the whole network through grants and private donations rather than a government recreation budget. The trails start around 7,800 feet and wind through mixed conifer and aspen along a year-round stream, switchback across an open bluff, sweep down into a prairie grass meadow, and climb a gully to views that stretch into the Cloud Peak Wilderness. The land trust reports the network now sees more than 20,000 visits a year, which tells you this stopped being a locals-only secret a while ago, even if most visitors driving the byway still don't know it exists.
There are several ways in, depending on how much time you've got:
- The Base Trailhead is on state land and is the only lot kept open once the road closes for winter, which makes it the reliable pick if you're not sure about conditions.
- The Aspens Lot, on BLM land, is named for the trees that surround it and is a reasonable second choice once Base fills up.
- The Forest Service lots farther up the road add more mileage and elevation change if you've got a longer window than a quick after-work walk.
Full directions and a current trail map are posted by the Bureau of Land Management, which also maintains the winter parking notice for the Base lot. It's worth a bookmark rather than a memory, since which lots are open shifts with the season.
The Window Is Real, and It Closes
None of this is available indefinitely. Sheridan County closes Red Grade Road for the winter, typically from mid-December through the start of April, and in some years snow shows up at elevation well before that official date. A survey conducted years ago by the Sheridan Recreation District found that residents wanted more access to exactly this kind of close-to-town trail system, which is part of why the network has kept expanding since. The demand was always local first. The 20,000 annual visits came later.
What that means for the next several weeks is straightforward. The aspens along Red Grade will turn before the ones lower in the valley, the road stays open long enough to catch most of that progression, and none of it requires the planning, the cabin booking, or the full day on U.S. 14 that everyone else chasing the same color has to build their trip around. You already live at the base of the shortcut. The only real decision is which lot to park at on a given week.
If you've got out-of-town family or friends who want a proper introduction to the Bighorns while they're visiting, we're happy to point them toward the trailhead that fits their afternoon, or help them see the rest of what makes this stretch of Wyoming worth a longer look. Powder Horn Realty has been on the ground here long enough to know which turn to take off Bird Farm Road, and we're always glad to talk trail conditions along with everything else. If a visit turns into more serious questions about the neighborhood, you can request a tour and we'll take it from there.
