Drive up County Road 36 on a Tuesday evening in early September and you will pass the turnoff for Strawberry Park Hot Springs, still running on its summer clock, still reachable in whatever you happen to be driving. A few minutes further up the same gravel road, the gates of Perry-Mansfield are lit for a rehearsal that would not have existed on this campus five years ago. One end of the road is winding down toward a hard seasonal deadline. The other end just started running later into the year than it ever has.
That is the thing worth knowing if you live in Strawberry Park: this neighborhood's two most recognizable institutions sit on the same county road and are moving in opposite directions this fall, for entirely different reasons. One is opening its calendar. The other is about to close a door it opens every November.
The Assumption That No Longer Holds
If you have lived here a while, you probably think of Perry-Mansfield the way most of Steamboat does: a summer institution. Kids arrive in June, the campus fills with rehearsals and recitals through August, and by Labor Day the meadows go quiet again until next year. That was true for most of the school's history. Founded in 1913 by Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield, the campus is recognized as the oldest continuously operating dance and theater school in the country, and until recently its rhythm matched that of a summer camp: intense for ten weeks, dormant the rest of the year.
That is no longer an accurate description of what happens on County Road 36. This fall, for the first time, Perry-Mansfield is running structured performance programming that starts in late August and doesn't wrap until mid-November, spanning the exact stretch of the calendar that used to belong entirely to the Hot Springs' unrestricted summer access.
What's Actually Running
Two ensemble programs make up the school's Fall 2026 season. The Senior Ensemble started August 24 and runs twelve weeks, through November 15, working with the school's Broadway-credentialed faculty toward a full showcase performance. The Junior Ensemble started a week later, August 31, and runs ten weeks through November 8, built for younger performers working toward a junior-scale production. Both are happening right now. If you drive past the campus most evenings this month, the lights you see on are these two rehearsal tracks.
Layered on top of that, Perry-Mansfield has said it is developing a for-credit Performing Arts pathway in partnership with local schools, aimed at giving high schoolers access to the same caliber of training during the academic year rather than only in summer. The school has framed this as an expansion still taking shape, with a recital or showcase option built into each semester once it launches. And in November, the campus hosts Limon/NYC, a residential program running November 2 through 5 that pairs college-level dancers with a nationally recognized dance company, an extension of a relationship the school has maintained with the José Limón tradition in past summer showcases as well.
Here is the shift in plain terms:
| Historically | Fall 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Program window | June through August | August 24 through November 15 |
| Audience | Summer visitors, camp families | Local semester-long students plus visiting professionals |
| Culminating events | Summer showcases only | Fall showcase (Nov 15), junior production (Nov 8), Limon/NYC residency (Nov 2-5) |
A campus that spent 110 years running on a single summer clock is now running on a fall one too. That is not a minor scheduling footnote. It changes what the road sounds like, what kind of traffic moves past your driveway on a Tuesday night in October, and what it means to live within earshot of a working performance campus in a season when the meadows used to be empty.
Why the History Matters Here
None of this would register as a real shift if Perry-Mansfield were a newer operation testing out a fall schedule. It registers because the school has been doing exactly one thing, at exactly one time of year, since Woodrow Wilson's first term. The campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, and its 76 acres in Strawberry Park still hold the original cabins and studios, including the Julie Harris Theatre where students staged a production of Wonderland this past June. A century of institutional muscle memory just got rerouted into a second season, and that kind of change moves slowly in an organization this old. The fact that it is happening now, visibly, on your road, is worth noticing rather than filing away as generic camp news.
The Other End of the Road
While the school extends its year, Strawberry Park Hot Springs is heading toward the moment it does the opposite. Under Routt County law, from November 1 through May 1, reaching the springs requires a four-wheel-drive vehicle equipped with snow tires or chains. This is not a suggestion posted for tourists. It is a legal access requirement, and it applies to the same stretch of County Road 36 that carries you past the Perry-Mansfield gates.
The mechanics of a visit stay simple the rest of the year: admission runs on a two-hour reservation window, $20 per person, cash only, with no ATM on site. Access comes either from the main entrance off County Road 36 or via the three-mile Hot Springs Trail that starts off Elk River Road, a route locals use on foot or by bike through the warmer months. Pool hours run 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday, with minors not permitted after dark.
For six months a year, that entrance sits behind a hard vehicle requirement. For the other six, it is one of the more open-access spots in the valley. Right now, in early September, you are in the last unrestricted stretch before the rule flips back on, which is precisely the same window in which Perry-Mansfield's fall programming is ramping up for the first time in its history.
What This Adds Up To
Put those two facts next to each other and the neighborhood's actual character comes into focus. Strawberry Park has always held both ends of a spectrum within a few minutes' drive of each other: a rigorous, internationally connected arts campus with Broadway faculty and century-old cabins, and a rustic, cash-only backcountry hot spring reachable by trail or gravel road. What's new this fall is that both ends are shifting on the same calendar. One is extending its season further into the year than it ever has. The other is about to legally restrict itself the way it does every winter. For a few weeks in September and October, County Road 36 carries both versions of Strawberry Park at once, before the springs quietly become 4WD-only and Perry-Mansfield keeps going without them.
If you've lived here through a few of these turns, none of this is dramatic. It is just the valley doing what it does every year. But this particular fall, one half of that rhythm changed for the first time in over a century, and it's worth knowing exactly what changed and why, rather than assuming the campus down the road is still on its old summer-only schedule.
If you ever want to talk about what any of this means for property values, seasonal access, or what it's like to actually live along County Road 36 day to day, The Metzler Team knows this stretch of Strawberry Park as well as anyone in the valley. Contact us anytime.
