Photo credit: Rich Jakubiak
Please join us as we recognize DLC’s 2020 Oak Leaf Award recipient, Sue Moore, in honor of her significant contributions to the community through agriculture and land conservation.
Nearly a native, I grew up on a cattle ranch northeast of Colorado Springs, where my lifelong love for productive land, open spaces, livestock and agriculture in general got an early spark. I went to school and college in Virginia and Massachusetts and got my first job at the United Nations in New York. Then my husband Davis and I were married and we went to work at the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington for a few years before returning to Denver, where I taught history at Kent Denver School. In 1966 we found our beautiful old homestead in the West Plum Creek valley where we still live, and where for many years I bred Thoroughbred horses and Black Angus cattle. We have two sons ranching and farming in Montana and three grandchildren.
My community activities in Douglas County have included memberships on a library accessions committee, the county fair livestock sale committee, and the Douglas County Historic Preservation committee. I was an active 4H mom, a Plum Creek Pony Club instructor, and an original board member of CALF, the Colorado Agricultural Leadership Foundation. More recently I enjoyed being a board member of the Douglas Land Conservancy and at present volunteer on two of its committees. I have also done volunteer editing for the Colorado Cattlemens’ Agricultural Land Trust.
Photo credit: Rich Jakubiak
Please join us as we recognize DLC’s 2021 Oak Leaf Award recipient, Mark Weston, in honor of his significant contributions to open space preservation locally, regionally and nationally.
Weston is not a Colorado native, but he moved here as soon as he could. He grew up in Birmingham, Mich. After a couple of summer jobs working in Colorado in the late 1960s, he moved to Colorado in 1970 to attend Colorado College in Colorado Springs. He’s been in Colorado ever since, graduating from Colorado College, and then earning a Masters of Library Science degree from the University of Denver.
He worked in libraries before switching to real estate appraisal in 1986.
In the early 1990s he worked on the citizen-initiated campaign to institute a sales and use tax in Douglas County to help fund the purchase of open space.
Weston consults nationally on matters related to qualified appraisals, qualified appraisers, and conservation of land and water rights. He retired as the Director of Colorado’s Division of Conservation in September 2019. Prior to joining state government in 2016, Weston practiced for 30 years as an independent real estate appraiser, with special interest in valuation of conservation easements on private land.
His local service includes being on the Douglas County Planning Commission, the county’s Open Space Advisory Committee, Director of Cherry Creek Basin Water Quality Authority and a trustee for the Douglas County Libraries.
He is a past board member of the Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts and was a member of the Colorado Conservation Easement Oversight Commission. Weston frequently consults on issues relating to appraisals and partial interest valuation.
He was appointed in January 2021 to the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, the national oversight agency for land trusts throughout the United States.