TWIN LAKES — The creek is running, the beavers and swallows have returned and this tiny town on the eastern side of Independence Pass once again has its beloved, iconic pond.
For decades, the pond in the hamlet of Twin Lakes served as a peaceful lunch spot for travelers, as a wildlife viewing area for locals and as one of the most photographed spots in Colorado. When filled, the pond reflected an old barn and the snowcapped peaks of the Sawatch Range — an image that adorns postcards and tourism websites.
But the pond dried up last year after a developer altered the path of the stream water that filled it.
“All of a sudden, it was not a wonderful place,” said Kurt Schweigert, who has lived in Twin Lakes for nine years. “It was a big ol’ pit of mud.”
When the pond dried, the community organized.
On Sunday, residents gathered to celebrate the restoration of the pond after their collective efforts brought back the water flow. Twenty people — and four dogs — gathered near a new sign marking the creek before touring the water infrastructure put in place to restore the pond.
“Most people would probably look at this and say that the creek and the barn pond are no big deal,” said Rick Akin, who has owned a home in Twin Lakes for 18 years. “But to the people in Twin Lakes, this is a big deal. People were very, very upset about this — and they were just getting run over.”
The pond dried in May 2024 after a developer working on a luxury home community outside the town — AngelView at Twin Lakes — blocked water from flowing down through Twin Lakes.
The developer, Alan Elias, said then that he needed to make the change to meet a legal obligation to measure water flow farther downstream. State water officials declared the change legal, but the residents of Twin Lakes vowed to bring the pond back.
They soon found themselves taking a crash course in Colorado’s complex water allocation system.
“It sounded very simple, but it was not,” Akin said with a chuckle.
Led by Akin and his wife, Jennifer Schubert-Akin, locals founded a nonprofit group, Friends of Berrier Creek. The nonprofit then leased water from Pueblo Water to send down the stream and refill the pond. It also leased water to account for the liquid that would be lost to evaporation off the pond.
The group’s leaders hired a lawyer and a water engineer. They submitted an application for a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to change the streambed, created a substitute water plan for the state Division of Water Resources and researched headgates and measuring flumes.
By May, the group was ready to install the hardware that would once again put water in the stream.
Its members took Akin’s canoe trailer to Leadville to pick up the culvert — a long metal tube — and walked it through the short section of woods to the stream. Groups of residents cleared the waterway of willows and debris. Others moved rocks in the stream to make way for the culvert.
Together, they installed the culvert and a measuring flume.
With approval from the state water engineer’s office, residents opened the headgate and started sending water to the pond.
By the first week of June, the pond was full again. Within weeks, the croaking of frogs returned. Geese, too, and swallows that swoop in to feed on the pond’s insects at dusk.
“It was the slap of the beaver tails I missed the most,” said Karen Batista, who has lived across from the pond for 24 years.
In that time, she’s watched people get married at the pond and seen artists set up their easels to paint the scene. The pond makes people slow down and take a moment to appreciate the place, she said.
There’s still more work to be done to make the pond a permanent feature.
The nonprofit must now go to water court and hash out a long-term plan. It will also contest the determination from the state engineer’s office that the waterway is not a natural creek and instead a manmade ditch — which meant that Elias, the developer, had no obligation to allow water to flow there.
Elias has reached out to Akin since the pond has refilled, and Akin wants to try to settle their differences.
“You can’t just have a momentary reaction to this, you gotta draw out a battle plan to get this done,” Akin said.
The status quo also requires maintenance from the coalition of townspeople. Every day, Robert Krehbiel takes a measurement from the flume and reports the current flow to the Division of Water Resources. When he leaves town for a few weeks, he’ll need to find a volunteer to do the work in his place.
Now that the pond is back, Jennifer Schubert-Akin sees visitors once again sitting down on the benches on its perimeter to drink a cup of coffee or eat a snack.
“We have a responsibility to be stewards of this beautiful, historic place, not only for our enjoyment but for the enjoyment of future generations,” she said. “Twin Lakes is one of the crown jewels of Colorado, and we want to do our part to make sure future generations can enjoy this very special place.”
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