If you stand on the deck of the Living Springs Log House and look out over the water, it’s easy to assume the lake simply came with the property — a nice amenity, like a pool or a view. But the truth is richer than that. This lake, and the log house that overlooks it, are part of a story that began almost thirty years ago with a couple’s dream of building something more than a neighborhood: a community.

A Vision for a Christian Village

Around 1998, Bob and Joan Rutz purchased roughly 700 acres of land — land that included a 40-acre lake now visible from the log house’s windows. Bob and Joan weren’t developers in the ordinary sense. They had a vision: a place where families could each own their own property outright, while still living in genuine cooperation with one another — sharing resources, sharing labor, and sharing Christian fellowship. It was less a subdivision and more an intentional community, built one relationship at a time.

The Couple Who Built the Log House

Among the people drawn to that vision was an older couple who purchased the parcel where the log house now stands. Their home is a hybrid log house, with solid cypress log walls in the living room and master bedroom and framed construction in the rest. They chose not a modest cabin but something substantial — big enough, in their thinking, to shelter relatives and friends if the uncertainties of Y2K turned out to be as disruptive as many feared at the time. That instinct — to build a home that could hold and shelter others — still shapes the character of the house today. It was never meant to be just a private retreat; it was built with room for people.

A Handshake, Not a Deed

As more families bought land from Bob and Joan and settled into the community, everyone was told the same thing: they had permission to use the lake. It was part of the spirit of the place — shared water for a shared neighborhood. But that permission lived in conversation and community trust, not in the language of any deed. No easement was ever recorded. It was, from the beginning, an understanding between neighbors rather than a legal guarantee.

The Park the Eagle Scouts Built

That spirit of shared ownership without formal paperwork shows up again in the little park at the water’s edge. The neighborhood’s young people — several of them working toward their Eagle Scout rank — built it themselves: a spot for volleyball, picnics, and jumping off the dock on a summer afternoon. It has functioned, in the truest sense, as a commons. Generations of kids and neighbors have used it, and the park has been maintained ever since by volunteers from the community — no property management company, no dues structure, just people who care about the place pitching in.

Where Things Stand Today

Bob Rutz has since passed away, and Joan has handed the stewardship of the property — including the lake — over to their children. To date, no resident has ever been challenged or told they couldn’t use the lake park; the informal arrangement that began in 1998 has simply continued to hold, out of respect and shared history.

That said, here is what this means going forward: the lake access enjoyed by the neighborhood has always rested on goodwill rather than a recorded right, and the dam itself — a real and ongoing expense — remains solely the responsibility of the Rutz family. Should the lake ever be sold outside the family, there’s no guarantee that access would continue. For now, though, the lake remains what it has always been: a shared gathering place, sustained by the same cooperative spirit that brought this community into being nearly three decades ago.

A Home With a Story

The Living Springs Log House sits at the intersection of all of this — a home built out of generosity and preparedness, in a community founded on an unusual kind of trust, overlooking water that has brought neighbors together for a generation. It’s more than a lake view. It’s a piece of a story still being written.