Stillwater Ranch looks for new home in Northern Colorado

LOVELAND — Stillwater Ranch has grown 300% in the past three years and at such a rapid rate that the nonprofit ranch has to leave its Loveland location and is in the process of finding a new home, likely in Windsor or Weld County.

“Growth — people say that’s a good problem to have, but it is a problem,” said Wendy Buckley, founder and executive director of Stillwater Ranch. “We’re limited in what we can do here. … We can’t build anything else.”

Stillwater Ranch sits on 10 acres owned by Buckley and her husband, John. Six acres are used for a pole barn and a camping area that serve veterans, service members and their families with equine and other outdoor programs. The ranch, a nonprofit founded in 2014, has outgrown the property in the past four or five years, scaling from about 30 visitors to as many as 800 in a given year, including 300 veterans and their families and another 500 people at three to four annual community events that raise awareness about the ranch and veteran needs. Those events include flag retirement ceremonies, Easter egg hunts and harvest festivals. 

“The county has not been happy with us since the end of last year,” Buckley said. “We need to go through a land use permitting process, which would take two years and thousands of dollars.”

Larimer County wants Buckley to install restrooms, which would require an additional sewer hookup, and a paved parking lot. Instead of doing the work, she decided to look elsewhere to house the ranch site since she needs a larger space and to continue programming at a scaled-back level in the interim.

“The needs haven’t dropped off because we need to find a new property,” Buckley said. “We are still doing small things here.”

Buckley originally planned to start a capital campaign in two to three years but moved up that timeline due to the county requirements, hoping to find a property by the end of 2024. She’s considering Weld County, particularly Windsor, after seeing interest generated there through three strategy meetings to brainstorm how the ranch might acquire property; the meetings were organized by the town of Windsor Economic Development department starting in June 2023.

“We are looking at Windsor, since Windsor has taken a great interest in us,” Buckley said. “We would like to be embedded in a supportive community.”

Stacy Brown, former director of economic development for the town of Windsor, notified the Larimer County Economic Development department that a nonprofit is considering leaving the city of Loveland, as required by her department’s code of ethics. Brown, who began work April 1 as town manager in Kersey, generally worked with primary employers and retailers in her previous position with Windsor, but because of the scope of programming offered by Stillwater Ranch, she decided to help the ranch conduct a search for property that’s donated or reduced in cost, plus is connecting the ranch to people and resources to increase awareness and generate support.

“When I met with them and learned what the organization is about and the services it provides, it became near and dear to my heart,” said Brown, whose father served for four years in the U.S. Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “He’s very fortunate to not have any PTSD. … He was very lucky, and a lot of people aren’t, and that’s why there’s Stillwater Ranch.”

Stillwater Ranch started out with primarily equine therapy for veterans and their families, at-risk youth and women coming out of crisis, plus other populations, but over time, Buckley realized she needed to focus on one group and chose veterans and their families. In 2019, she hired a consultant to navigate other programs she could host at the ranch without duplicating efforts to better support those veterans, gathering information through surveys, roundtables and community discussions.

“The veterans will come in and have ideas about the programs and services they want to do,” Brown said. “It’s not the organization telling them what they need. They are heavily participating in creating and driving these programs to not only help themselves but other veterans.”

Through that navigation effort, the ranch identified four foundational pillars of service, those of comradery, family support, alternative support, and training and education. Alternative therapies, for example, include equine therapy, meditation with horses, and veteran outings and expeditions, while training and education focuses on K9PT dog training and archery clinics. There also are retreats, family camps, bimonthly campfires and reintegration activities. 

“It’s a varied offering of what veterans want and how they want to approach their journey, whatever it is: healing, bonding with their families or getting involved somewhere that has other veterans,” Buckley said. “The camaraderie is at the bottom of everything we do.”

Veteran Hillary Daly of Loveland became a client at Stillwater Ranch in 2014, working with a Percheron Cross horse named Thunder for two years to address symptoms of PTSD and depression and to deal with the stress of single parenthood. She served as an ammunitions specialist for five years with the U.S. Army and was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. 

“They helped me compartmentalize,” said Daly, who also volunteered by helping start the K9PT program in 2019. “I was able to work with horses to ground myself and remind myself that I was safe.”

Daly found comfort in how horses are honest, trusting, accepting and forgiving creatures, and with Thunder, she felt like he was protecting her and was a steady force in her life. Being on eye level and interacting without equipment helped her connect to him, she said.

“I’m excited to see what the future holds for Stillwater Ranch and how its growing,” Daly said. “It gives veterans a place to feel safe, like they can come exactly as they are. They are going to be accepted. They don’t have to worry about rejection or judgment.”

Stillwater Ranch’s additional programming, activities and events are brought in by outside experts, and smaller nonprofits use the ranch as a larger platform to host their own programs, she said.

“We hope to be a hub bringing together dozens and dozens of organizations serving veterans,” Buckley said, adding that the idea is to create “one-stop shopping for veterans.”

The new ranch site ideally will be 40 acres or larger, as outlined in the Stillwater Ranch Strategic Plan, a living document started in 2021 that launched with ideas and visions for the future property and is being refined to “what makes sense for a new ranch,” Buckley said. 

“The bigger, the better, to be able to add to it over the decades as veteran needs are changing and growing,” Buckley said. 

The Strategic Plan is a multiphase plan outlining where the nonprofit is headed, why a new location is needed and what the new property could look like. It details the purchase or donation of land and infrastructure in phases to allow for the nonprofit’s continued growth, increase in programming and expanded coverage area from Denver to southern Wyoming.

“For me as a founder, the vision overall is similar to YMCA of the Rockies, where you come on the property and use it how you want to or you join in the scheduled programs or activities,” Buckley said. “We want veterans to feel like this is their home away from home.”

The infrastructure is conceived in the first phase to include a multipurpose building for meals, training and events, memorial gardens with flags of all branches of the military, and a variety of animal facilities that include an indoor and outdoor arena. Later phases could include cabins for camping — there also will be ground camping in the earlier phases.

“Nothing is set in stone,” Buckley said. “It’s always driven by veterans telling us what they want and need.”

Once the property is acquired, Buckley can get started right away with some of the programming, including animal interactions, campfires, archery lessons and dog training that do not require a building.

“We are told repeatedly just being on the property is therapy for veterans,” Buckley said. “It’s a space unlike the real world. Having a space they own is helpful to them.”

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