“Heave the Beave”: Conservationists join fight over planned Buc-ee’s between Denver and Colorado Springs ...Middle East

EL PASO COUNTY — At about 10 p.m. on the northern edge of El Paso County, stars pierce the black sky as crickets chirp with the steady hum of cars racing down Interstate 25.

Come daylight, it’s where the urban sprawl gives way to vast green pastures and views of one of the Front Range’s largest protected open spaces. Bighorn sheep, pronghorn and elk graze the 22,000-acre Greenland Ranch, formed through a massive land deal 25 years ago to stop fast-growing Colorado Springs and Denver merging into a giant megalopolis. 

Just north, state and federal crews are building one of the country’s largest wildlife overpasses, designed to help big game safely cross one of the state’s busiest corridors. And about 2½ miles west toward the foothills is Palmer Lake, a rustic town whose residents marked its commitment to preserve its “small rural-town character” in its master plan. 

Over the past six months, a fight has been unfolding between those who want to develop the small town of 2,600 and those fighting to protect Colorado’s dwindling open spaces and natural resources. 

At the center of the controversy lies a 120-pump, 24-hour gas station and its buck-toothed beaver mascot named Buc-ee.

Developers with the Texas-chain supersized gas station and convenience store are seeking approval from the town of Palmer Lake to start building a superstore directly across a two-lane county road from Greenland Ranch’s southern boundary. But in order to do so, Palmer Lake needs to annex the land. 

On Thursday, town officials will consider whether the annexation request from Buc-ee’s meets the legal requirements. 

Independent studies commissioned by Palmer Lake say the development would boost significant annual sales tax revenues for the town and bring $10.5 million in investments by Buc-ee’s into transportation improvements as part of the site development. 

More than a gas station, Buc-ee’s has become a destination for people around the world hoping to stop for the chain’s fresh-cut brisket sandwiches, Beaver Nuggets, and homemade fudge. The “Disneyland of gas stations” has a devoted following of customers who flaunt their fandom with stuffed beavers, T-shirts and other Buc-ee’s branded memorabilia. 

Colorado’s first Buc-ee’s in Johnstown, north of Denver, was largely met with enthusiasm with hundreds of people showing up hours before its grand opening. 

But many people in Monument, the closest town to the Buc-ee’s proposed second location, oppose the project and fear the thousands of cars it is expected to attract per day that could clog rural roads. Lights from the 24/7 gas station would pollute the night sky in nearby towns, affecting wildlife and disregarding Palmer Lake’s dark sky ordinance, they say.

With a projected water demand of 37,300 gallons a day, Buc-ee’s and its notoriously clean bathrooms, are estimated to increase the town’s overall water demand by about 20%, according to an independent report released by the town, raising concerns among some that the project would be unsustainable for the small town’s water system and require new infrastructure taxing an already-strained aquifer.

Others see the proposed gas station as an issue much larger that undercuts the state’s commitment to conservation.

Ken Salazar, who helped create Great Outdoors Colorado to purchase the Greenland Ranch, called the open space a “Colorado crown jewel” and a prototype for the country on how to protect a landscape for its people and wildlife.

“​​I think towns and counties need to have a long term vision for the future, as opposed to going for low-hanging fruit that brings in development that can create consequences that we don’t want to see for our children or for our grandchildren,” Salazar, the former U.S. Secretary of the Interior told The Colorado Sun. 

“The long term view needs to have a sense of what is good for the people, what is good for the community, what is good for wildlife, and not doing it with a revenue view for the next five years or 10 years because a lot of things are going to change in that time frame. Once you develop you’re not going to unwind that,” he said. 

Palmer Lake Mayor Glant Havenard did not return The Colorado Sun’s request for an interview and a Buc-ee’s spokesperson declined an interview.  

As Palmer Lake town officials head down the path toward approving annexation for the state’s second Buc-ee’s, strife has divided communities north of Colorado Springs. 

About 300 people attended a December meeting in Palmer Lake where Buc-ee’s representatives shared plans for Colorado’s second location. “Heave the Beave!” signs dot roads near the proposed site. A community-led watchgroup filed a lawsuit in January against Palmer Lake and more than 300 signatures have been collected for a petition to change the way the town considers and approves annexations. 

Palmer Lake’s Board of Trustees approved the eligibility of Buc-ee’s initial annexation request in a 4-1 vote last December, but then the Texas company withdrew its proposal over a technical issue and resubmitted it a second proposal last month.

Prior to their initial vote, the town’s Board of Trustees said in a statement it planned to “proceed in a prudent and fully informed manner” and conduct “investigations that go beyond what is required by statute” when deciding whether the annexation is in the best interest of the Palmer Lake residents. 

The development would include a 74,000-square-foot convenience store and gas station and 780 parking spots along I-25. Pending approval, Buc-ee’s plans to break ground this summer and complete the project in late 2026.

“What do we value in these places?”

For Erik Glenn, who oversees a conservation easement of Greenland Ranch, the vast largely undeveloped land is more than a breath of fresh air while driving down I-25. The historic ranch and the effort to preserve it helped Coloradans see the value of conservation. 

It’s one of the few open spaces in Colorado that is protected from future development under a voluntary legal agreement between landowners and a land trust or government entity, known as a conservation easement, to protect the land and natural resources — forever. 

Douglas County agreed to manage the land under the easement until the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust took over the easement in 2020. The county also purchased and conserved the remaining 3,600 acres of Greenland Ranch west of I-25 and created Greenland Open Space, which is now available to the public for recreational use. 

While the Buc-ee’s annexation won’t infringe on the land trust’s physical boundaries of the easement, Glenn said the massive gas station would drastically change the landscape that residents have invested in preserving. 

“This value has been confirmed by the citizens of Colorado to be important, to keep certain places open for wildlife to be left to do what they do and the more we develop in these areas, the less wildlife can live in harmony,” said Glenn, executive director of the land trust.

“I’m not anti-development, but we all have to be thoughtful about how we balance the need for development and also our need for a healthy and thriving ecosystem,” he said.

Driving past the protected space, it’s not uncommon to see a herd of elk or pronghorn or deer.If the project is approved, Glenn said Palmer Lake and Buc-ee’s should be willing to “go above and beyond” to ensure stringent protocols and systems are in place to reduce the potential for any leaching or runoff to impact downstream neighbors or other properties. 

“I just think that it’s worth having a discussion about, what do we value in these places? Because there’s few remaining places, especially along the Front Range, where you can have that type of interaction,” he said.

The proposed Buc-ee’s would generate 10,947 weekday trips to the area, with 75% of the traffic consisting of people passing through the area, according to an independent traffic study released by Palmer Lake officials earlier this month.

Traffic impacts would likely be minimal to Palmer Lake, the study found, estimating that only 3% of the traffic would come from and go to Palmer Lake. But some say the increased traffic would undermine safety improvements underway to protect wildlife in the area. 

In a May 20 op-ed in The Colorado Springs Gazette, Salazar and local cable magnate John Malone, who bought Greenland Ranch in 2000 and helped fund the conservation easement, pointed to the wildlife overpass that crews are building over six lanes of traffic near mile marker 165 to connect 39,000 acres of habitat to the Pike National Forest. The $15 million project, in partnership with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, aims to reduce wildlife-vehicle crashes by 90%. 

Elk, mule deer and pronghorn usually avoid smaller tunnels and enclosed structures that can’t accommodate their antlers. On average, there’s a wildlife-vehicle crash every day along the corridor, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. 

There’s also concern that under Buc-ee’s proposal, plans for road expansion would infringe on a small strip of land on an adjacent conservation easement, also on Greenland Ranch, held by Douglas Land Conservancy, the nonprofit’s executive director Laura Sanford said in a May 16 letter to Palmer Lake’s trustees. The conservancy oversees the easement and the land is owned by Douglas County.

Sanford declined to comment on the record, but in her letter, she wrote that under the easement, commercial activity is not allowed. The conservancy group recently worked with Douglas County on a land transaction in order for the county to widen the road for public safety. 

With cooperation from all sides, the process took more than three years to complete. 

“Douglas Land Conservancy is simply making sure you are aware of the impacts of the conserved land could have on any type of annexation property or process,” Sanford wrote. 

A finite underground water supply

Apart from the traffic study, Palmer Lake officials also contracted independent studies to evaluate the fiscal impact that Buc-ee’s would have on the town and whether the town’s water system could support the development.The gas station is projected to increase Palmer Lake’s daily water demands by 20%, a report by engineering firm GMS Inc. said. Buc-ee’s would pay the town’s water department $329,579 a year for water use, the report said. 

The development would put Palmer Lake in a “potentially dire situation” by straining its unsustainable water supply from the Denver groundwater basin, said Roy Martinez, who sits on the Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District Board in the northern part of El Paso County.

Many residents in El Paso County drink water drawn from million-dollar wells that come from the Denver Basin, a geological formation that expands along the Front Range from Colorado Springs to Greeley and east to Limon. 

But the supply isn’t infinite.

For the town to be able to meet the Buc-ee’s water demands, Palmer Lake would have to build a new well and lay pipes two miles out to I-25, the report recommended. Martinez said he felt the report fell short of addressing the long-term future and sustainability of Palmer Lake’s water.

“The well that they are proposing to drill is just going to go right back into that unsustainable groundwater basin,” Martinez said. “And that’s the whole issue here — they’re relying on an unsustainable resource.”

Buc-ee’s demand for water could stress a system that several Front Range communities depend on, especially as the population grows and water utilities see declines in multiple aquifers, he said. Hydrologists can’t pinpoint when the wells will run dry, but some water providers are planning a mix of conservation efforts and new infrastructure for renewable resources of water. 

“It takes years and years of serious thought and planning, how what works, what works best for your situation, and then how are you going to fund that going forward in the future,” said Martinez, who has worked in the water industry for 34 years.

Regardless of whether town officials ultimately approve the Buc-ee’s proposal, Martinez said he’s grateful the controversy has drawn attention to Palmer Lake’s limited water resources and sparked broader conversations about growth.

“Because at the end of the day,” he said, “the one and only good thing that’s come out of this whole conversation with Buc-ee’s is that awareness.” 

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