Courtesy Photo | For approximately four years (1968-1972), the Trinidad Control Tower stood alone until...... read more read more
Louie and Rick Torres’s roots run deep in southern Colorado along the Purgatoire River and are intertwined with the history of Trinidad Dam.
At the turn of the century, Jose Luis Torres, moved from Taos, N.M., to Torres, Colo., 35 miles west of Trinidad, Colo., where the Purgatoire River starts in the Sangre de Christo Mountains. The Purgatoire feeds into Trinidad Lake.
Jose’s grandson, Joseph Louie Torres, graduated high school in 1954 and then served in the military during the Korean War. After his time in the service, Louie returned to southern Colorado where he worked as a laborer and heavy equipment operator for Clement Brothers, Inc., a construction company in Trinidad, Colo.
In the mid-1960s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Albuquerque District awarded Clement Brothers the contract to build Trinidad Dam. Louie operated the cranes and poured concrete during the control tower’s construction. His son Joseph Rick Torres was born during these years.
Construction on the dam paused from 1968 to 1972 due to negotiations over water rights between Colorado and Kansas. Louie’s son Rick said that for about four years the control tower stood by itself, as it had been constructed before construction had paused. After an agreement between Colorado and Kansas was reached, construction resumed, and the dam was finished in the mid-1970s.
Louie said that he remembers several VIPs from Washington, D.C., coming in for the June 11, 1977, dedication of the dam.
As a young child at the time, Rick recalls slightly different memories of the dedication. He remembers there was a stack of gunny sacks stacked 10-15 feet high in the garage area of the dam’s project office. It was great fun to climb and play on them while the dedication took place.
After the dam was finished, Louie worked for a few months for the Corps of Engineers under Roy Roberts who was the first Corps’ lake manager at Trinidad. Then Louie went to work for Day & Zimmerman, the Philadelphia-based company that had the contract for the dam’s operations and maintenance.
In addition to working on Trinidad Dam, Louie worked on many other construction projects in Colorado from 1960 to 1980, including Pueblo Dam and Interstate 25. Louie operated cranes and poured the concrete for many of I-25’s overpasses between Trinidad and Denver. During these years he traveled a lot, coming home to his wife and children in Trinidad on weekends. Rick said his father told him he went into business for himself in 1981 because he wanted to come home after following construction for 20 years.
Louie Torres’s newly formed company, J.L. Torres Inc., took over the maintenance contract for Trinidad Dam in the early 1980s and ran the dam’s operations and maintenance until the early 2000s when the Corps stopped contracting it out and began doing it in-house. At this point, Louie, and his son Rick, who had joined him in working at the dam, transitioned to work for the Corps of Engineers, staying on at Trinidad Dam.
Rick Torres grew up alongside the dam. When he was in high school and college, he worked for his dad at the dam during the summers. While in college, Rick decided he didn’t want to sit behind a desk all the time. In 1989, after graduating with a degree in business administration, Rick came back to work at the dam full time.
A typical day’s work for Rick might include making gate releases, weed control, and maintenance work on the control tower, generator, and gates. He also takes water quality samples, maintains the project’s boundary fence, and works on the plots of land where food is grown for wildlife. In the colder months, there is snow control work as the area can get 5 to 6 feet of snow throughout the course of a winter.
“It was a good time working with my dad,” Rick said. “They are times that I will always remember. Working with my dad for all those years was a blessing that many kids don’t get to experience. There were times when we would butt heads about the way things should be done. He always thought his way was the only way to do certain things, but we always seemed to work things out.”
Rick said there’s been a lot of change in the 40 years he’s worked at the dam and many of the changes have been in personnel, both at the project and at the Corps of Engineers’ district office in Albuquerque, N.M.
Over the years, Rick has worked with all 10 of the lake project office managers and eight different Operations’ chiefs going back to Tom Farrell. He remembers working for at least 19 Albuquerque District commanders beginning with Lt. Col. Kent Gonser, who was commander of the Albuquerque District from 1987-1989. (District commanders rotate every two years).
“I remember when my dad retired in 2008. It was a difficult time getting used to him not being here every day,” Rick said.
“As far as contributions at the dam, I feel I have almost dedicated my life to this project. Not ‘if’ but ‘when’ I retire, it will be like saying goodbye to a family member,” Rick said, reflecting on his years at Trinidad Dam.
Louie Torres retired on Dec. 31, 2008. At his retirement party, Brig. Gen. John McMahon, commander of the USACE-South Pacific Division, awarded him with an Award of Service for his more than 35 years of hard work and dedication to the facilities at Trinidad Dam.
“We are very fortunate at the Trinidad Lake Project Office to have the intimate corporate knowledge and history afforded by Rick and Louis Torres being with the project for nearly all of the dam’s operating life,” said Kim Falen, Trinidad Lake project manager. “In this day and age, that is nearly unheard of and is truly a priceless legacy.”
| Date Taken: | 05.12.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 05.12.2025 18:17 |
| Story ID: | 497748 |
| Location: | TRINIDAD, COLORADO, US |
| Hometown: | TRINIDAD, CO |
| Hometown: | ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, US |
| Hometown: | RATON, NEW MEXICO, US |
| Web Views: | 31 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Lasting Legacy: A Father and Son’s Role in Building, Maintaining Trinidad Dam, by Elizabeth Lockyear, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
