Editor’s note: This is the second story in a series about Taralyn Romero’s property rights battle in Kittredge, Colorado. Read part 1 here.
Social media can distort truth, warp reality, and pit neighbors against each other. It can even turn a woman living in a house next to a park into a “wicked witch.”
The first confrontation that blew up online seemed innocuous in Taralyn Romero’s memory. A grandmother and two young children were in her backyard. The kids, armed with small shovels, were digging holes in the creek bank as if it were a beach, she said.
Romero said she walked over and asked the woman if the kids could go dig in the playground where there was a sandbox. Romero said she made the request in a normal tone, but the woman seemed startled, like she hadn’t expected anyone to come talk to her.
But on social media, Romero saw a rant from the woman’s daughter. In this telling, Romero was a nasty woman who had screamed at the grandmother and terrified the children.
“In people’s minds, they said … ‘This is the type of family that we don’t want in our community and in our neighborhood,’” Romero told Fox News Digital. “And once they got convinced of that false narrative, they felt emboldened and almost heroic for threatening us.”
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Taralyn Romero said a survey of her property showed that she owned the land on either side of Bear Creek. County officials originally said they weren’t sure where the property lines were, and that the course of the creek had likely changed over the years. (Courtesy Taralyn Romero)
Romero’s battle with her community and, ultimately, her local government, began in early 2021 when she bought a house in the woods about half an hour outside Denver, Colorado. Her backyard included a steep hill and, below, a creek ran through the edge of the property with a community park on the other side.
Locals had played in the creek for decades, but Romero said a survey of the property showed the land on either side of the water belonged to her.
When that rope went up, people lost their damn minds … It catapulted this situation into a whole other stratosphere.
— Taralyn Romero
County officials said they didn’t know who owned the land because the creek had likely changed course since the original property lines were drawn. They asked community members to access the creek from a different park about a mile east of Kittredge instead while both sides hashed out the issue.
Many people ignored the request.
After about a year of dealing with the trash and damage left behind by visitors, not to mention worrying about potential legal liability if anyone got hurt, Romero said she’d had enough. She hung a thin blue rope across her property line, blocking access to the creek, and posted “no trespassing” signs on the trees.
“When that rope went up, people lost their damn minds,” she said. “It catapulted this situation into a whole other stratosphere.”
Romero said people started conspiring online in Facebook and Nextdoor groups, collectively agreeing to ignore the rope and “openly trespass.” They believed the land was public property or, even if it wasn’t, it should be because the community had enjoyed it for so long.
Romero took numerous videos of people disregarding the signs and sauntering up to the water’s edge, even waving at her as they did so.
“Hi. You guys are trespassing,” she can be heard calling out in one video.
“Yes, I know,” a woman responds. “Thanks for being an awesome neighbor.” She flashes a thumbs up.
Romero felt like she was portrayed “as a villain … someone who didn’t want to watch children have fun.”
“They called me a rich White woman from California — or they told me to go back to Mexico,” the native Coloradan recalled.
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Taralyn Romero and her partner filmed numerous exchanges they had with people they say openly trespassed on their property. (Courtesy Taralyn Romero)
Screenshots shared with Fox News Digital show some of the posts. In one, a purported member of the Save Kittredge Park committee wrote an alternate version of Martin Niemoller’s famous critique of Nazism, and those who said nothing in the face of evil.
“First they came for the city dwellers, And I did not speak out because I was not a city dweller,” the woman wrote in part. “Then they came for the locals, and I did not support them.”
Michael Eymer, Romero’s partner, was aghast.
“You are comparing us to Nazis,” Eymer wrote in the comments under the post, adding that, as someone with Jewish lineage, he found this “deeply offensive.”
It didn’t take long for the “social media bullying” to cross over to “real life danger,” Romero said.
“Sad woman you are what goes around comes around, is it worth having your house burned down or even worse cause that’s what’s gonna happen if you piss the wrong person off,” a message sent through a GoFundMe page Romero eventually started for her legal fees reads in part. “I hope for your sake you lose that land.”
People flipped off Romero and Eymer from down by the creek. “Suck my d—,” a man yelled when Eymer told him to stay off their property. A woman twice mooned a surveillance camera near the street by Romero’s house.
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Crowds gathered at Bear Creek all summer long, Romero said, and many people ignored signs requesting that people not dig or otherwise damage the property. (Courtesy Taralyn Romero)
Romero still felt like facts could overpower feelings. But when she tried to share the survey showing the property lines, she says she got blocked from community groups, or people suggested she may have bribed the surveyor. Friends who tried to advocate for Romero and her family were similarly blocked, she said.
As the gossip swirled online, one community member dubbed Romero the wicked witch, then changed her own profile picture to one depicting Glinda the Good Witch from the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”
Shut out of the online community groups, Romero turned to TikTok and created her own persona in August 2022: The “Wicked Witch of the West.”
“If someone like that comes to my property, cusses me out, flips me off, trespasses, and is just a general bully, if she is the good witch, I guess I am the wicked witch, right?” Romero said. “Because I am the opposite of her.”
One of her first videos, which has since amassed more than 4.5 million views, shows crowds of families playing in Bear Creek. A disgruntled Romero, with her raven hair, red lipstick and black felt hat, is superimposed over the scene.
“POV: they tell you it’s not a big deal and you shouldn’t have bought property next to a park if you don’t want the Public in your backyard,” reads an onscreen caption.
Romero said she wanted a place to express herself using humor. Her first posts mocked the women she said accused her of “stealing” the land. Seemingly overnight, she gained 15,000 followers. Then 100,000.
If she is the good witch, I guess I am the wicked witch, right? Because I am the opposite of her.
— Taralyn Romero
“What started out as a forum for artistic expression, to literally just cope with what had happened, quickly became a platform for sharing my side of the story,” she said.
She shared “endless videos of us being cut out and harassed and antagonized.” And now, instead of being kicked off platforms, she had a sympathetic audience, outraged at peoples’ lack of respect for private property.
“It changed how I started to use social media in order to basically pull a reverse uno on what was a very traumatic and prolonged and unnecessary situation over my property,” she said.
Taralyn Romero says she roped off the portion of her property on the north side of Bear Creek after repeated requests that visitors respect the land went ignored. Community members who previously enjoyed access to the creek were outraged. (Fox News Digital)
And it proved to be a valuable platform for venting about her newest enemy. Because just three weeks before Romero posted her first TikTok video, the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners had sued her for access to the land.
“They were going after anything and everything that they possibly could in order to take my property from me,” she said.
This is the second story in a series about Taralyn Romero’s property rights battle in Kittredge, Colorado. Read the final installment on Tuesday.
Hannah Ray Lambert is an associate producer/writer with Fox News Digital Originals.
