Years ago, a few savvy Palmer Lake residents knew a trick to replenishing their diminishing lake: They turned on a valve hidden in the hillsides and sucked water from a local reservoir into the town’s namesake.

The valve is still there, somewhere. But the locals’ secret method of refilling their evaporation-prone lake was exposed and became the subject of a state lawsuit. Now, for at least the fourth time since 2002, the lake is a black mud puddle, and residents are fishing around for a legal and sustainable way to refill it and keep it full.

As a first step, Palmer Lake residents on Tuesday night rekindled a nearly extinct community group, Awake the Lake, that had fought to fill the lake in the past. Jeff Hulsmann, who owns a pub overlooking the lake, has for 15 years steadfastly remained one of the group’s few leading members.

How to fill the lake is a true conundrum – but one which Hulsmann sought to simplify for 30 of his neighbors Tuesday.

“The plan to move forward is, we need to find a way to fix the bottom of the lake,” Hulsmann said.

Although prone to evaporation and much tinkering by the town and railroad companies, the lake is centuries old, said Hulsmann. In a world of steam locomotives, it was used to fill the engines, and was replenished by a valve system running to a reservoir. When diesel replaced steam, the railroads used the lake water to cool the engines. Eventually, in the 1970s, a railroad company gifted the lake and all its deeds – rights to use the reservoir valve, for instance – to the town, according to Hulsmann.

The railroads still exert control over the small lake. In 2005, to combat flooding onto nearby tracks, Union Pacific built a culvert, preventing stream water from flowing into the lake.

But taking on the railroad is not a battle that Hulsmann expects to win. In the meantime, he argues that preventing seepage from the lake with a liner or a berm are the best options. One by one, as residents suggested other methods, like tapping a deeper aquifer layer, Hulsmann detailed the legal barriers the town would face. Not to mention financial barriers, as well.

“Money is an issue here,” Hulsmann said. “No matter what we do, we are going to have to raise money. “

With town’s small restaurant industry backing him, Hulsmann has a summer fundraising plan in place. Palmer Lake will host five summer concerts, with $10 tickets, to raise money for an engineering study for the lake.

For Hulsmann, it might be the last effort to resuscitate Palmer Lake. But he wants to try.

“It would cost a lot of money to make the whole town into Palmer Meadow,” he joked. “We’d have to change all our logos.”