CALHOUN COUNTY — A protracted legal battle between people living in the Gidels Addition of the Twin Lakes area and the Calhoun County Board of Supervisors has gotten some clarity.

Disagreements since 2019 have resulted in legal filings over the issue of whether the county or about 28 landowners own the lake shoreline. District Judge Kurt Wilke on Dec. 5 ruled in favor of 46 defendants, that the county’s interest in Twin Lakes Road is limited to an easement, not ownership of the shorefront land.

An attorney for the county, John Werden, filed a motion on Dec. 20 to have the earlier December ruling reconsidered, but Wilke denied that the very same day.

The Calhoun County Supervisors in their Dec. 23 weekly meeting went into a closed session, as allowed by Iowa law, to discuss issues involving litigation, but took no actions on whether more legal steps will be taken involving Twin Lakes.

Todd Essing is a Twin Lakes landowner who has compiled a lot of information from the county concerning attorney fees and court filings. Essig on Dec. 29 said he hopes the county pursues no more action and walks away.

“The sleepless nights and needless stress must stop. The five years of baseless harassment needs to stop. The county has never owned 1 blade of grass or 1 inch of soil in this 1,500 feet tract of land,” Essig said.

However, Essig said he fears more is on the way, as he asserts: “The county now wants to seize control by placing 90 feet of the front yards of the landowners into a road easement, to strip private use from the court-validated landowners.”

Calhoun County Board of Supervisors member Scott Jacobs on Dec. 30 said the county has worked in a diligent and open way to resolve the issues in the Twin Lakes area.

Twin Lakes is not a town, but rather a Census Designated Place, located in rural Rockwell City and rural Manson. People began living there in the 1850s, and to this day Twin Lakes is prized by people for its lake recreational uses.

In 1867, a road was created at the high point close to the lake to connect two stagecoach stops, for people traveling from Fort Dodge to Sioux City. That road eventually became known as Twin Lakes Road.

Judge Wilke wrote that Twin Lakes Road typically follows the shoreline, but at the southwest corner, unlike in other areas, the road separates homes from the lake.

The judge added that “the deeds of the landowners provide that their lots extend across the road to the high-water line of the shore of North Twin Lake. Over the years, claimants have exclusively used that shoreline for their own benefit, placing docks, (and) erecting steps and patios along the shoreline at a cost of significant time and expense.”

In addition to the people living in homes adjacent to the lake, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources operates Twin Lakes State Park.

Jacobs and Essig disagree on the genesis for the long saga.

Jacobs said it started in March 2019, when an IDNR employee came to a county board meeting, to ensure that dock permits were being properly issued, so ownership of the shoreland should be determined.

Jacobs said that led to the county to hire a property and title expert, an attorney from Algona to research the issue, “since the county did not want anyone to lose their docks.” Jabobs said the expert’s report was “99 percent sure that the county owned the disputed land.”

The county at that time proposed a dock management plan, which by August 2020 resulted in a lawsuit by one of the landowners.

“The county board did not sue the affected landowners across the road first,” Jacobs said.

Essing said the protracted dispute began when the county board wrote a letter to one of the Gidels Addition landowners with concerns over ownership of the shoreline. He said years of legal challenges resulted in the Calhoun County Board of Supervisors being unpopular.

Jacobs has two more years in his four-year term and was not up for reelection in November. The other two county supervisors, Scott Becker and Carl Legore, did not win reelection, and some people had asked them to resign in June. Two new Calhoun County supervisors were sworn in the first week of January.