Despite protests from Keep Missouri Heights Rural (KMHR), a citizens group opposed to the Twin Acres Riding Stables and Boarding House on the Eagle County side of Missouri Heights, some residents would rather have horses than a home.
“I’m in favor of keeping Twin Acres,” said Milagro Ranch owner Felix Tornare, “because, in my personal opinion, if we allow (KMHR) to take control of the county commissioners and eliminate Twin Acres as a viable ranch, we’re all in trouble as ranchers.”
Tornare and his wife, Sarah, purchased their Missouri Heights ranch when it was still a working dairy in 1998. The two have built a ranch and a business, a successful cow-calf and regenerative agriculture operation from the ground up.
“When I moved here 25 years ago, there was not a house in sight, and now when I look outside all I see is houses and lights,” he told The Sopris Sun. “For all of us, it’s just a matter of time before that very neighborhood starts complaining to the county commissioners that they don’t like us being here because we smell like cows and horses, that we’re riding through their land. They don’t want us to live here anymore.”
Twin Acres Equestrian Center is proposing to establish a new 7,860-square-foot, 25-stable boarding house and 20,000-square-foot covered riding barn for commercial operation on 20 acres of land on the existing 101-acre ranch, which is currently under a conservation easement. The property could eventually accommodate up to 50 horses.
Residents in the surrounding area worry that flies, noise, lights and waste from the 50 horses will worsen the local air quality. Other concerns include water supplies, traffic and the risk of wildfires.
But for Tornare and his neighbors, Gay Lewis, Glenn Throop and Kat Rich, who live in Garfield County in Missouri Heights, it’s a matter of values. Their biggest fear is the loss of Colorado’s laid-back rural lifestyle, which they say is already disappearing. And it’s not just about changes in land use; it’s also a shift from friendly to sometimes acrimonious attitudes between neighbors.
Tornare used to drive his cattle down County Road 100 to rented pastures along Highway 82, but he no longer does that because it’s dangerous. “People used to stop and help,” Tornare explains. “People were patient, they would take videos, they would participate. People wanted to be a part of it.”
Now it’s a different story: Drivers are impatient and rude. “If we’re going slowly, they give us the finger,” he says. “They don’t honk the horn and they don’t stop or try to go around the herd.”
Lewis misses the freedom to ride her horse and gallop into the wilderness. “There’s nowhere to go now,” she explained. “Everybody has their gates closed and locked and they’re off limits. Nobody welcomes you on their land anymore.”
The definition of “rural” is a contentious issue in Missouri Heights, which today is dotted with at least 14 subdivisions and crisscrossed by roads. Many of Twin Acres’ opponents fear it would take away from Missouri Heights’ rural character, and they shut down the proposed Ascendigo Autism Services Camp in 2021.
But in a June letter to Eagle County commissioners, Sarah Tornare pointed out the irony of their complaints. “It’s ridiculous that people who live in subdivisions are protesting because Missouri Heights is no longer ‘rural,'” she wrote, adding that development essentially displaces the very rural feel the homeowners are trying to preserve. “It seems they never really wanted to live in a ‘rural’ area. They just wanted to live in a nice, clean housing development with the views and serenity that we all wanted to move here to enjoy.”
Rich agrees: “They want to say they live in a ranching community. They want to eat fresh produce. They want to go to the farm stand. They want to do all of this,” he says. “But when it comes to what actually produces that produce, they don’t want to have anything to do with it, because they don’t want to see it. They don’t want to smell it. They don’t want to hear about it.”
Tornare remembers how the community came together to fight the Lake Christine Fire in 2018, and he hopes that camaraderie can return. “This whole thing can be worked out and put together, and we can live together and not be angry all the time,” Tornare said. “But compromise is a two-way street.”
Eagle County commissioners will meet Tuesday, July 23 to discuss and potentially decide the fate of Twin Acres. Throop, who has lived on one of the old Fender family ranches with Lewis since 1998, said it would be helpful for homeowners to know the history of Missouri Heights. “This was a dairy and potato farm,” he said. “I understand the world changes, and I just want people who want the country life and ranching to have the opportunity to do that.”
