Traveling at the 40-mph speed limit on Kipling Street in Arvada, a car can drive completely past Two Ponds National Wildlife Refuge in exactly 17 seconds.

The refuge is easily missed – but shouldn’t be.

Two Ponds is a tiny island of wildlife habitat surrounded by a sea of houses, medical offices and a convenience store. It is a place where the sound of city streets fades into the background, overtaken by the call of songbirds.

At just 72 acres, it is far less than 1 percent the size of the metro area’s much better-known Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. Yet despite its diminutive dimensions and location in the middle of suburbia, Two Ponds more than earns its place in the National Wildlife Refuge system. In a pocket-size area, the refuge packs in wetlands, wooded areas and prairie, providing a home to native animals. It freezes the land in time, taking visitors back to an era when this city was a wild place.

But none of this would be true if not for the timely intervention of a small crew of advocates.

By the time Arvada resident Bini Abbott found Two Ponds, it was all but lost. In late 1990, Abbott brought her dog to Dr. Al Marshall’s veterinary clinic located near the intersection of West 80th Avenue and Kipling Street in Arvada, less than 10 miles from downtown Denver.

Like any other visit in the previous 20 years of taking her pets to his practice, she parked in the lot and walked her dog through the front door. The practice, called Arbor Acres, was a Tudor-style building flanked by bushes with leaves turning into vivid shades of warm autumn tones. The yellow marigolds in the front planter were still blooming. Traffic buzzed up and down the nearby roads that separated the clinic from the surrounding housing developments.

Abbott had visited this clinic and her veterinarian friend dozens of times but had not noticed the oasis that sat just behind the building.

“Come out and see what is happening out the back door,” Marshall told Abbott, knowing that she was a strong, outspoken supporter of preserving natural habitats. “I am about to lose it to developers.”

Abbott and Marshall navigated through the veterinary hospital, passing exam rooms, the surgical suite and the room that housed the hospitalized dogs and cats in a bank of cages before reaching the back door.

When Marshall opened the door for Abbott, she laid her eyes upon a little slice of nature straight out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This was Two Ponds.

A hint of moisture lingered in the cool air as Marshall and Abbott walked out into the wooded area. They navigated down a dirt path that cut through the trees and into a small open meadow. Willows and cattails surrounded a small pond at the edge of the meadow where surface fog rose from the water. A small flock of Canada geese honked loudly as they flew overhead.

Marshall and Abbott continued past the pond. As they walked, Abbott noticed a beautiful weeping willow tree on the northeastern edge.

“Twisty,” Abbott declared. “I shall call that tree Twisty for all its reaching branches.”

By the end of 1990, then-58-year-old Abbott was hard at work being the leading lady in a zoning melodrama, spreading the story about the pending destruction of this urban jewel.

“Bini came to one of the Urban Wildlife Photo Club meetings telling me she was a terrible photographer and needed help on a project,” said Wendy Shattil, a conservation photographer based in Denver. “Bini’s words along with some photos had more power than anything else to show how important it was to save Two Ponds.”

Abbott went to numerous Arvada City Council meetings to talk about the benefits of saving Two Ponds. She wrote editorials to the Arvada Sentinel and Rocky Mountain News. She lobbied the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies, as well as state and U.S. legislators.

And the responses to her passionate outreach poured in to help the cause.

On Sept. 26, 1992, a group of dedicated community citizens led by Abbott were finally able to declare they won.

Today, thanks to grassroots citizen involvement, Two Ponds is now permanently protected as a national wildlife refuge. It is smaller than all but two dozen of the National Wildlife Refuge System’s more than 560 refuges. The City of Arvada has grown up around the refuge, but this land has been protected for all to enjoy.

Beyond the ponds, there is a marsh thick with cattails, rolling hills of former farmland that retains remnants of its historic high prairie landscape. From the top of the hills, sweeping, unobstructed views of the Front Range mountains stretch all the way to Longs Peak and beyond to the north. The western and southern edges of the property have groves of mature pines and cottonwoods.

There are also more than 9 acres of wetlands habitat ideal for foxes, raccoons, muskrats, a wide variety of migratory waterfowl and songbirds, great horned owls, snakes, mice, hawks, tiger salamanders, turtles and mule deer that reside in the safety of its cover.

One of the more impressive areas of the refuge is the west side, where maintained natural trails meander through rolling hills covered in short-grass and mixed-grass prairie plants. Especially pretty in late spring and early summer, visitors will also find an abundance of dragonflies, damselflies and butterflies across the hills and in the wetlands around the ponds. People keep an eye out for turtles and frogs near the ponds and use binoculars to scan the wetlands and wooded areas for nesting birds.

Two Ponds hosts hundreds of volunteers, partners with local schools and helps Boy and Girl Scouts achieve their badges.

“Two Ponds is a neighborhood treasure right out our back door,” said Jeff Sweetman, first grade teacher at Meiklejohn Elementary School in Arvada. The kids love the experience of looking at the wildlife in the ponds, woods and fields. They have the rare opportunity to explore a place in their neighborhood set aside to exist in its natural state.

More than 30 years after Abbott’s first view of Two Ponds out Marshall’s door, the veterinary practice and the willow named Twisty have fallen to the fate of time, but excitement still exists at what explorers of this urban oasis can see right out their back door.