The Ghosts of Dowdy Lake Colorado

Many locals and visitors to Northern Colorado’s Red Feather Lakes region enjoy the beauty and serenity of Dowdy Lake, situated about 21 miles north of Fort Collins up highway 287, at an elevation of 8100 feet. Indeed, one guidebook calls the area “Quintessentially Northern Colorado… a great place for family to kick back and kids to explore.” However, few know the dark and interesting history of Dowdy Lake.

Dowdy Lake is a relatively shallow (28 feet maximum depth) lake approximately 104 acres in size. Like many other lakes, Dowdy is man-made. However, Dowdy was literally made by one man – a murderer named Edward Dowdy.

History of Red Feather and Edward Dowdy

In the late 1800’s the Red Feather lakes region was a swampy highland with few residents. At the turn of the 20th century, however, local developers envisioned a future mountain resort. With that in mind, they decided to build up the small settlement of Red Feather (Originally ‘WestLake’, but renamed after local Cherokee/Creek singer Tsianini Redfeather) and create a series of local lakes suitable for fishing and boating. The project employed many workers, some of whom lived in ramshackle mountain camps, and some of whom moved to the area with families, hoping to settle and perhaps cash in on opportunities in the growing area. One of these men was Edward Dowdy.

Edward Dowdy was born near St. Louis in approximately 1878. As a young man, he moved West to Colorado and worked a series of jobs in Colorado Springs and near Denver. At some point, Dowdy must have continued North, for in 1902, Dowdy married Virginia Longmont, a resident of Greeley Colorado. Edward and Virginia had two children: Joseph (b. 1903), and Anna (b. 1905). After a summer of working in the growing Red Feather Lakes development project, Edward Dowdy moved his family to the area permanently. In a letter to relatives he described his desire to “stake a business of his own”, which he speculated might be a hotel for travelers. Apparently, Dowdy borrowed significant sums of money for this venture against future earnings, and this may have helped trigger the downward spiral of alchoholism and trouble that Dowdy soon found himself mired in. Virginia Dowdy wrote to an aunt in 1908 that life was good for her and her children “I remain as much happy as one would hope, and am truly excited by the promises before us.” But there was a dark undercurrent in the same letter: “I do not see a need for you to come visit yet this season, as there is still the concerns and labours & etc. one might expect.” Early legal records note that Dowdy was jailed no less than 3 times during the period 1907-1909, and at least once explicitly ordered to leave Larimer County. Thus, it was perhaps not initially a surprise when Edward Dowdy and his family were no longer observed on the dirt roads surrounding Red Feather.

A terrible murder, and the punishment that followed

In September 1909, however, local children made a gruesome discovery: The head of Virginia Dowdy, half submerged in a marsh near the center of what is now Dowdy Lake. The rest of her body was not found, nor has it ever been since. Immediately, Larimer County officials started a hunt for Edward Dowdy. He was located near Estes Park, working under the alias “Edward Giles”. When asked about his family, he broke into tears and immediately admitted murdering them and disposing of their bodies in the marsh. Edward Dowdy was tried and found guilty for the murder of his family. AT the time, capital punishment was quite controversial in Colorado (it was abolished in 1897 but reinstated in 1901), and Edward Dowdy escaped the death penalty. Court records at the time suggest part of the reason was his “dreadful and miserable countenance, as hell itself had created an encampment specifically to house and torture his frame.” Presumably, local officials hoped Edward would live a long life wracked with guilt.

So instead of death, Edward Dowdy was sentenced to hard labor. In particularly useful and just sentence, the local warden was tasked with forcing Edward to excavate the marsh where he had disposed of his family’s bodies, in an effort to give them a proper Christian burial and further the needs of local developers, who were still interested in a lake in that area.

As Edward Dowdy was a convicted murderer, he was denied use of metal tools and forced to dig using his bare hands and a wooden spade. Over the course of 13 years, working sunrise to dusk, often voluntarily without supervision, Edward managed to dig a large shallow depression that forms the heart of what is now Dowdy Lake. Apparently Edward never spoke a word during his entire sentence, and lost three fingers and a thumb to infection after working them, literally, to the bone. Edward Dowdy died in 1922, at the age of only forty-four. Records suggest that Edward Dowdy was buried in a small graveyard for criminals and Indians, but the location of that graveyard is unclear and it may have been destroyed during construction and widening of nearby highway74. Records do not indicate what happened to Virginia Dowdy’s head. The rest of her body, and the bodies of her children, were never found although what may have been part of a child’s skull was found near the south shore of Dowdy lake in 1947.

Because the area was designated as a tourist destination by local businessmen and developers, the story of Edward Dowdy and his family was quickly suppressed and a local embankment built to flood the area excavated by Edward Dowdy. Originally, Dowdy lake was called ‘Cherokee Lake’, in keeping with the theme of Indian names for the local artificial lakes. However, locals often referred to the lake as ‘Edward Dowdy’s lake’, and in 1983 the lake’s name was officially designated Dowdy Lake in US Geological Surveys.

The Dowdy Lake Ghosts

In the 1950s rumors began circulating of a mysterious set of figures visible wading in the lake on bright moonlit nights. The best descriptions are of a woman accompanied by two children, one on each side. In some accounts, the woman is headless. Locals maintain that these are the ghosts of Virginia, Joseph, and Anna Dowdy, searching for their lost bones.