Handing out Great Sand Dunes quarters, Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday rolled out an aggressive plan to develop a sprawling network of trails connecting Colorado’s great places.

“That’s an intoxicating vision of what Colorado could be. We could have a trail system that is second to none anywhere in the world,” he said, explaining his vision that in 20 years — within one generation — every resident in Colorado is a 10-minute walk from “vibrant green space.”

Hickenlooper unveiled his vision at Great Outdoors Colorado’s first-ever Outdoor Summit, a gathering of outdoor recreation players designed to unveil a sort of GOCO 2.0 as the lottery-funded group moves beyond land preservation and into connecting green spaces and inspiring Coloradans to enjoy them.

DaVita Healthcare Partners CEO Kent Thiry, kicked off the summit from the top floor of the 41,000-employee company’s Denver’s headquarters. The GOCO-supported revitalization of the South Platte corridor spread filled the view west of the building as Longs Peak peeked through the clouds on the northern horizon.

“We need to redefine land issues as an integral part of daily life, not something off on the side,” Thiry said, quoting revered conservationists John Muir and Aldo Leopold in his opening speech.

Thiry pledged $50,000 of his own money and $50,000 from DaVita to kick off GOCO’s new Inspire Initiative, which aims to distribute $25 million in grants to Colorado communities eager to push kids off the couch and into a natural setting.

The first step in Hickenlooper’s “Colorado Beautiful” plan calls for development of a comprehensive map that would detail every trail in Colorado. That interactive, GIS-created map, identifying all the state’s open spaces and the trails that both explore and access those natural landscapes, will be ready by this time next year, he said.

The state Department of Natural Resources, working with GOCO and other non-profits and state agencies, by next year will identify the state’s 16 most critical gaps in trails — like the 30 miles of missing trail that prevents bicyclists from pedaling from Wyoming to New Mexico without riding on a road.

GOCO funds and support from foundations like the Nature Conservancy and corporations like DaVita will help secure either the land to develop those trails or easements allowing trail access.

The strategy — which dovetails with Hickenlooper appointing mountaineer Luis Benitez as the state’s first director of the newly created Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office — marks a new direction for the state, moving beyond simply preserving the land for the next generations. Now it’s time to connect Colorado residents with their lands and spark a love for those natural places in kids who are enticed more by screens than woods.

In the last 100 years, Colorado has worked to create 40 wilderness areas, four national parks, eight national monuments — including the latest surrounding Brown’s Canyon on the Arkansas River — in addition to hundreds of parks, trails, restored river corridors and wooded refuges.

“We are faced with the opportunity to build on that,” said Hickenlooper, noting that the state’s population has grown from 3 million in the early 1990s to more than 5.3 million today and is projected to grow to more than 8 million in the next 25 years.

It’s time to connect all that’s been done with every resident of Colorado, he said. Especially kids.

Getting kids outside does more than thwart obesity, heart disease, depression and attention disorders, Hickenlooper said. It can ignite the next generation to protect lands that have been painstakingly preserved in their natural state.

“Kids need nature and nature needs kids,” he said. “If we don’t provide our children early exposure to the wild outdoors … they will be far less likely to ever fully appreciate it and if they don’t appreciate it, will they protect it? Helping children fall in love with nature should be not just a top Colorado priority but a top national and even international priority, right there alongside addressing climate change and preserving wilderness.”

Ken Salazar, who persuaded Colorado’s diverse population to amend the state’s constitution and create GOCO in 1992, cited the organization’s early successes. He described how GOCO money helped Douglas County preserve several hundred thousand acres of ranchland on its southern border, forever blocking the chance that Denver and Colorado Springs meld into a corridor of city on the Front Range.

Preserving special places, developing a “best in class” bike trail system, fighting to protect federal lands and inspiring kids to enjoy wild lands are key strategies that need to guide Colorado, Salazar said.

“How do we make sure that Colorado grows in the right way? We will grow,” Salazar said. “How do we grow in a way that protects Colorado and the beauty our state is known for?”

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasonblevins