Before the property-rights lawsuit, the protests and the death threats, Richard McLean was a respected Boulder District Court judge, RTD board member and successful lawyer.
He served a term on the Boulder City Council in the early 1970s. His colleagues elected him mayor in 1972. They remember him as someone who helped bridge the divide between the reform advocates swept into office on the power of the youth vote and the conservative business interests who had previously dominated Boulder politics.
He gained notoriety when he and his wife filed an adverse-possession claim in 2007 to gain ownership of a portion of their neighbors’ land that they used to access their backyard.
The case garnered national headlines and led the Colorado legislature to change the law to make adverse possession more difficult to exercise.
McLean died at his home May 7. He was 79.
“There were many parts of his life,” said Josie Heath, director of The Community Foundation, who knew McLean from her time as a county commissioner. “He cared about equality. He cared about hearing all voices.”
McLean was born in Denver and attended East High. He got his undergraduate degree from Stanford University, spent two years in the Army and got his law degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Although his law practice was in Denver, McLean stayed in Boulder and became active in Democratic Party politics. He led a Colorado delegation in support of Eugene McCarthy to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and was elected to the Boulder City Council in 1970.
He was appointed district court judge in 1981 by then-Gov. Dick Lamm and remained on the bench until he retired in 1996.
McLean was elected in 1998 to serve as Boulder’s representative on the Regional Transportation District’s board of directors and lobbied for the passage of the FasTracks transit expansion in 2004 before leaving office.
After his years of public service, McLean and his wife, Edith Stevens, filed a successful adverse-possession claim for land next to their home on Hardscrabble Drive. Adverse possession allows trespassers who have openly used land for 18 years to claim it as their own. The case was ultimately settled when the property owners agreed to let McLean have a strip of their land.
“When it’s all said and done, they took my property,” said Don Kirlin, who had owned the land. “That’s how I’ll remember him.”
A celebration of life will take place at 4 p.m. June 18 at CU’s Grusin Hall. The family asked that donations in McLean’s name be made to the Nature Conservancy.
Erica Meltzer: 303-473-1355 or meltzere@dailycamera.com
