The city of Greeley, 30 miles southeast of here, just sent letters to Mary Humstone and Rose Brinks. In the letters, the city invokes eminant domain to explore and eventually develop the women’s Laporte properties, just north of Fort Collins.
But Greeley should be sending them Thank You letters.
That’s because these two women have turned away developers for decades. Plus, they left pristine and feral a river corridor with a 100-year-old railbed. They may have thought they were looking after natural and historic resources. But without knowing it, they were preserving a perfect route for Greeley’s latest water pipeline.
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- The Greeley Salt Lake & Pacific tracks run along the Poudre River, northwest of Fort Collins, CO.
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- The GSL&P carried stone from Stout and was part of a vision for a cross country line that would run up the Poudre canyon.
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- Rose owns this property. She gets offers from developers frequently. She doesn’t want her picture taken, so I did it behind her back.
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- The city of Greeley, 30 miles downstream, thinks this is the best place for its water pipeline. It owns a treatment facility upstream. This will be its third pipeline from the facility. It can’t update the old ones because developments have covered the top of them. Greeley will use eminent domain to force the right of way.
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- If Greeley uses this route for its pipe, it will have to destroy a wide swath all the way through. That’s everything in these pictures. Including the rock walls of this passage. Note that the water eventually makes it to Greeley via the river without a pipeline today.
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- “Take a picture of that apple tree,” says Rose. “It feeds hundreds of deer and black bear.” The area hosts rich riparian animal and plantlife. The pipeline would destroy it.
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- Rose points out the difference between the stone work done on this ditch along the rail bed. Stone work farther back was done a couple years ago. Stone work in the foreground from 1880.
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- This bridge on the rail line was built in Chicago and used as a turntable in Wheatland, Wyoming. You can still see it’s turning mechanisms as you cross over.
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- Along rail bed. Another affected property owner, Mary Humstone, says they didn’t sell out to developers because it was never worth it. “How do you put a price on natural and historic resources?” Mary is a perservationist who works with the University of Wyoming and once worked for the National Trust. Rose preserved Bingham Hill Cemetery, which also lies on her property..
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- In all the reports about the controversy, so far, nobody is talking about how the pipeline will impact water flows though Fort Collins. Old timers remember when water levels were so high, you could ice skate from LaPorte to Fort Collins.
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- Old rail bridge. Other entities are competing for the water too. Maybe we’re the last generation to tube or kayak the river in the summer.
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- See the scar going over that hill? (You may need to click to see it.) That’s from a buried line put in by the phone company. Circa 1950.
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- If Greeley wins, the lesson for Mary and Rose, and all of us, is that preservation doesn’t pay. Take the cash, develop now, or someone will do it for you.
