With property for sale, fate of Swetsville Zoo uncertain
FORT COLLINS» With the Poudre River rushing in front of him and Harmony Road traffic buzzing at his side, Bill Swets ambled toward Buzzard George on Thursday.
The little bird — crafted with bike fork legs, a garden shovel body and giant amber eyes fashioned out of plastic light reflectors — stands just over two feet tall.
Compared with the behemoth metal T-rex towering over him and the other giant dinosaur sculptures that flank a snaking, nearby path on Swets’ east Fort Collins property, George is almost easy to miss.
But in August 1985, when Swets was looking to blow off steam after a late-night volunteer firefighter call in neighboring Timnath, Buzzard George was welded together with scrap metal and spare parts, kicking off a 34-year hobby and a beloved northern Colorado tradition.
Since that night in 1985, Swets, now 78, has welded about 180 metal sculptures — from whimsical creatures and towering wildflowers to shiny spaceships and a jeans-clad minion. The menagerie of metal creations make up what is known as the “Swetsville Zoo,” a whimsical roadside attraction that has delighted generations in northern Colorado.
But as development balloons adjacent to the zoo along Harmony Road near In
terstate 25, Swets recently listed the 36-acre swath of land for sale. The $10.5 million listing marks the core property’s first time on the market since Swets’ parents purchased it in 1942.
“It’s been in the back of my mind for a number of years, and then two months ago I finally made up my mind that this is it, you know?” Swets said.
Once surrounded by other rural farmland, the Swets property is now encircled by newer developments, including a Walmart and a Costco.
Since the announcement of a possible sale, Swets said he’s noticed more people stopping by the donation-based sculpture park, but there’s always been a steady stream of visitors.
“Almost every day we’ll have someone show up and say, ‘Oh, yes, I came here when I was a little kid,’ and now they’re bringing their ... not their kids, their grandkids.”
As Swets and his partner, Diane Tribble, 76, weaved through the sculptures Thursday, 62-year-old Charmaine Verbeek of Thornton stopped the couple to thank Swets for starting the zoo.
Verbeek said she and her husband used to drive their son to see the sculptures as a little boy. He’s now 20 and studying at the Colorado School of Mines, Verbeek said. When she heard the Swetsville Zoo was for sale, she wanted to drive her young grandsons, ages 4 and 2, from Denver to see it.
“I was telling them you’ll never see something this unique again,” Verbeek said.
Walking hand in hand with Tribble on Thursday, Swets answered questions about his life on the land.
He talked about how his parents brought him and his older brother there when Swets was just 10 months old, and how he grew up in its still-standing, two-bedroom farmhouse.
He pointed out creations with interesting back stories, from Buzzard George to the 40-foot “dream machine” — a Denver bus Swets rebuilt as a motor home for he and his late wife, Sandy, to travel in.
Their first trip in it would be to the Mayo Clinic in 1996, where Sandy was given only a few years to live as complications from a back surgery in the 1970s worsened her health, Swets said.
She would go on to live another 14 years, and they put 50,000 miles on the dream machine before Sandy died in 2010, Swets said.
Her voice can still be heard greeting people on Swets’ answering machine message, and her memory is kept alive in many of the sculptures her husband created — especially the sprigs of giant welded wildflowers near the property’s entrance.
“Sandy loved flowers,” Tribble said.
“We had a honeymoon that lasted 51 years and two days,” Swets said, adding that he met Tribble seven years later at the south Texas mobile home park he owns and spends his winters at.
“And now I’m on my second honeymoon for a year and a half,” he said.
As prospective buyers are shuffled in and out of the property almost daily, Swets said he’s still not sure about the fate of his sculptures.
“Right where we’re sitting right here, this is going to be developed. We know that it’s commercial,” Swets said from a Quonset hut community room that almost looks directly out to the property’s neighboring Costco store. “But along the river, that’s floodplain, so there’s room to put a park in there and put the sculptures there.”
As for leaving the only home he has known, Swets said he’s still unsure what that will feel like once a sale goes through.
“We’re talking my whole life here,” Swets said. “I don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”