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An official website of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, Colorado Here's how you know

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Developer Resources

Open data, a public API, and discovery files for integrations and AI agents

This page is for developers, researchers, and AI agents that want to read information from this website programmatically. Everything described here is public and free to use. Nothing on this page is an emergency service.

Open data and API

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office publishes one public JSON endpoint: the current fire restriction and Red Flag Warning status for unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado. It needs no API key, no account, and no authentication. Cross-origin requests are allowed from any origin (Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *), so you can call it from a browser, a script, or an agent.

You may reuse the data. Please attribute it to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, link to the source page, and quote the asOf date so readers know when the status was current. See Terms of use.

Fire restriction status API

Endpoint

GET https://www.jeffcosheriffco.gov/api/fire-restrictions/status

GET and HEAD only. OPTIONS returns a CORS preflight response (204). Any other method returns 405 Method Not Allowed with an Allow header.

curl -sS https://www.jeffcosheriffco.gov/api/fire-restrictions/status

Example response

The values below show the shape of the response. They are an example, not the current status. Fetch the endpoint for the live answer.

{
  "official": true,
  "authority": "Jefferson County Sheriff's Office",
  "jurisdiction": "Unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado",
  "asOf": "September 4, 2026",
  "url": "https://www.jeffcosheriffco.gov/safety/wildland-fire/fire-restrictions",
  "restriction": {
    "stage": "stage1",
    "label": "Stage 1 fire restrictions in effect",
    "stage1FromRedFlag": true,
    "source": "Automatic during NWS Red Flag Warning"
  },
  "redFlagWarning": {
    "active": true,
    "upcoming": false,
    "fireWeatherWatch": false,
    "headline": "Red Flag Warning issued September 4 at 3:12AM MDT by NWS Denver CO",
    "onset": "2026-09-04T11:00:00-06:00",
    "ends": "2026-09-04T20:00:00-06:00",
    "source": "National Weather Service",
    "resolved": true
  },
  "updated": "2026-09-04T03:12:00-06:00"
}

Fields

  • official: always true. This is the Sheriff's Office's own statement, not a third-party summary.
  • authority, jurisdiction: who is speaking and where the status applies. Restrictions here cover unincorporated Jefferson County only. Cities, and state and federal land, set their own.
  • asOf: the Mountain Time date the response was generated, as a long date (for example September 4, 2026). Quote it whenever you repeat the status.
  • url: the human-readable fire restrictions page.
  • restriction.stage: one of none, active, stage1, or stage2. active means the Sheriff has declared restrictions without naming a stage.
  • restriction.label: plain-English text for the stage, ready to display.
  • restriction.stage1FromRedFlag: true when Stage 1 restrictions are in effect automatically because of a National Weather Service Red Flag Warning rather than a Sheriff's order.
  • restriction.source: "Jefferson County Sheriff's order", "Automatic during NWS Red Flag Warning", or null when no restrictions are in effect.
  • redFlagWarning.active, redFlagWarning.upcoming, redFlagWarning.fireWeatherWatch: each is true, false, or null. null means the live National Weather Service feed could not be read. Do not treat null as "no warning". Check redFlagWarning.resolved and try again later.
  • redFlagWarning.headline, redFlagWarning.onset, redFlagWarning.ends: the NWS headline and the ISO 8601 start and end of the warning. Each is null when there is no warning or NWS omitted the value.
  • redFlagWarning.resolved: true when the NWS feed was read successfully. false means the three tri-state fields above are null because it was not.
  • updated: ISO 8601 time of the most recent source update (the NWS message time, or the start of the Sheriff's declaration), or null.

Where the data comes from

Red Flag Warnings come from the National Weather Service. Stage 2 fire bans come from a declaration by the Sheriff. Stage 1 restrictions apply automatically in unincorporated Jefferson County during a Red Flag Warning. The endpoint combines these sources on every request.

Caching and rate limits

  • Responses are cached at the CDN for 60 seconds and may be served stale for up to 5 minutes while they refresh. Polling faster than once a minute gains nothing.
  • The edge rate limit is 60 requests per minute per IP address. A second, server-side backstop allows 300 requests per minute per IP address across all /api paths. Over either limit you receive 429 Too Many Requests. Wait for the Retry-After header when one is present.
  • Errors on the API surface use RFC 9457 problem details (application/problem+json) with a stable code, a human detail, and a hint. Unknown /api paths return 404. Wrong methods return 405.
{
  "type": "about:blank",
  "title": "Not Found",
  "status": 404,
  "detail": "No API route at /api/nope.",
  "code": "not_found",
  "hint": "See https://www.jeffcosheriffco.gov/openapi.json for the public API description.",
  "instance": "/api/nope"
}

Not for emergencies

This API reports policy status. It is not an alerting system and it is not monitored in real time. If you see fire or smoke, call 911. For a non-emergency, call (303) 980-7300.

Machine-readable discovery

These documents describe the site and the API in formats built for software:

  • /openapi.json: OpenAPI 3.1 description of the fire restriction status endpoint, including the response schema.
  • /.well-known/api-catalog: RFC 9727 API catalog (application/linkset+json) linking the endpoint, this page, and the OpenAPI document.
  • /.well-known/ai-catalog.json: agent resource discovery manifest listing the API, the OpenAPI document, the agent skill, and this page.
  • /.well-known/agent-skills/index.json: agent skills index with one skill that explains when and how to check Jefferson County fire restrictions.
  • /llms.txt: a plain-text guide to this site for AI agents, including when to use it and when not to.
  • /robots.txt: crawler rules. Public pages, the status endpoint, and the discovery files are allowed.
  • /sitemap.xml: every public page with its last-modified date.

Markdown for agents

Every public page on this site, except the homepage and /news, can be read as Markdown instead of HTML. Send a request with an Accept header that prefers text/markdown:

curl -sS -H 'Accept: text/markdown' https://www.jeffcosheriffco.gov/privacy

The response has Content-Type: text/markdown; charset=utf-8, a Vary: Accept header, and an x-markdown-tokens header with a rough token estimate. It starts with YAML front matter (title, canonical URL, description, language) followed by the page's main content. Navigation, scripts, maps, and live feeds are left out. Markdown responses are not cached, so each request is generated fresh.

The homepage and /news are served from a static cache that cannot vary by Accept, so they always return HTML. Use /llms.txt for a summary of the site instead.

Terms of use

  • Public information. The data and documents described on this page are public information from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. There is no fee and no key.
  • Attribution. When you republish the data, name the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office as the source, link to the fire restrictions page, and show the asOf date.
  • No warranty. The data is provided as is. It can be delayed, incomplete, or unavailable, and the National Weather Service feed can fail. Treat null values as unknown, not as "no warning".
  • Not for emergencies. Do not build life-safety alerting on this API. Call 911 for emergencies.
  • Fair use. Stay within the rate limits above. Automated traffic that degrades the site for residents may be blocked.

Contact

Questions about the API or these documents: email the Public Affairs office at publicaffairs@jeffco.us.