The first national headline described me as a Colorado landowner who had "pulled the plug" on an entire luxury resort. Other outlets painted me as a stubborn millionaire punishing vacationers because he disliked development. A few reporters noticed that nobody had produced a deed showing the HOA owned the shore. One local journalist obtained a copy of the county GIS map used in the resort proposal and compared it with the certified survey. Her article asked a question nobody at Mountain Vista seemed eager to answer: how had a hundred and nine structures been built without a verified title report?
I did not give interviews. David advised me that every casual remark could become an exhibit, and I had no appetite for arguing on television while Garrett's lawyers prepared their trial strategy. My mailbox filled with letters anyway. Some people thanked me for defending private property; others accused me of destroying the local economy. A retired surveyor in Idaho sent a handwritten note saying he had seen similar boundary errors in resort developments and that the best protection was always the original recorded description. I pinned that one above my desk.
The less pleasant letters went into a separate file. One threatened to come up and refill the lake personally. Another said my grandfather would be ashamed of what I had done. That hurt more than I expected. Granddad had loved the water, but he had also believed that landowners should never be intimidated into surrendering property simply because somebody else had enough money to build first and ask questions later. I wished I could ask him whether I had chosen the right way to defend it.
The attorneys began exchanging documents in October. Mountain Vista produced marketing materials, meeting minutes, construction invoices, investment projections, and correspondence with contractors. Some of it was ordinary business paperwork; some of it made the entire operation appear more reckless than I had imagined. Several early project documents showed that a proper title survey had been listed as a required step before construction financing closed. Later checklists marked that item complete without attaching a certified survey of the shoreline tract.
David asked for the supporting report. The HOA eventually produced a planning map and a consultant's memorandum interpreting the county's simplified shoreline layer. Neither was a title opinion.
The memorandum referred to the land as likely public or association-controlled and recommended further verification before major expenditure. I sat in David's office reading that sentence several times. Somebody had written down the uncertainty in plain English. Garrett had built anyway.
One witness was a former administrative assistant who had attended several early development meetings. She remembered asking whether the eastern bank belonged to the Whitmore family because an old county road sign mentioned the private reservoir. Garrett had reportedly told the group that the ownership issue had already been resolved with the county. She could not prove what documents he had reviewed, and she had no personal knowledge of a title search. But her recollection was consistent with a pattern emerging across the records: questions had been raised, and the answers had been treated as settled without proof.