Marissa Donahoo sits down with her father, Martin Lind, and invites listeners into the intimate, often surprising story behind a place that grew from farms and gravel pits into the lakeside community known as Water Valley. In this episode Martin moves between memory and map: the farm auction that nearly ended them, the early days selling cars and oil pipe, then the moment he realized that reclaimed gravel pits could become the clearest, most beautiful lakes. He tells how a chance opportunity with Kodak land, a bold partnership, and a willingness to mine millions of yards of earth transformed a muddy reservoir into a vision of cascading water and neighborhoods that would change Windsor forever. He walks us through the grit of the 1990s—forming Poudre Tech Aggregates, racing a booming construction market created by DIA, and staking the first 120 lots where waterfront parcels that once sold for $65,000 now sit as prized addresses. Martin shares the small, human moments: the donated parcel that became Eastman Park, a skeptical attorney who literally ripped up a pro forma, and a baby-in-a-Ford-Explorer memory that grounds the tale in family. The narrative turns to the golf courses that became the spine of the community. Martin explains why they left wide fairways near the river, how the Pelican Lakes course rose from a mining template into a natural-looking course, and recounts the terrifying flood that carved into the mining operation before the lakes were filled. He recalls the pride when the engineering held through the 2013 Front Range floods—Water Valley emerged unscathed while neighboring areas flooded. The episode reveals the origin of names and the serendipities that shaped them: RainDance—an ironic nod to a dry, high plateau that needed “a rain dance” to hold water; Pelican Lakes—named after a California round of golf and immediately honored by a single white pelican that flew overhead on the groundbreaking day. Martin explains how they created fish habitat, drew pelicans from far away, and even influenced a local church’s iconography. In candid, funny moments, Martin recounts how a desperate-era trade ad for a jet led to meeting Fred Funk, who would become a treasured collaborator in designing Raindance National. From a laugh about the world’s shortest golfer designing the longest course to a story about asking Donald Trump for help and being told no, the episode mixes humility, humor, and the stubborn ambition that builds places people want to call home. Looking ahead, Martin sketches Cascadia—the next chapter of connected lakes, cascading ponds, equestrian ties, and a plan to honor agricultural roots with orchards, sweet corn, and seasonal community traditions. He explains the civic thinking—recessed sidewalks, preservation of Western heritage, and thoughtful engineering—that threads Water Valley, Raindance, and Cascadia into a single living landscape. By turns technical and tender, this conversation is both a developer’s blueprint and a family story: a study in how resilience, design, and imagination turn mud and gravel into community, and how one man’s vision became a multi-decade legacy that still feels unfinished. Listeners will come away with an insider’s view of what it takes to dream big, weather disasters, and craft a place where people truly want to live.
