In her Monument metal-working shop, Jodie Bliss has been shaping a face with drooping eyes under bushy brows, set to be fitted with long ears and a longer beard tumbling down to a future stoop.

“He’s an old, kind of gnarly dude,” Bliss says. “But he looks sweet. He’s a nice-looking, scruffy old dude.”

Another troll is coming to Colorado.

That future stoop? Under the tall pedestrian bridge of Palmer Lake, spanning over the railroad tracks between the town’s businesses and namesake body of water.

In the coming months, depending on Bliss’s progress — she says she’s more than halfway through the project of steel, copper, brass and silver — the troll could be seen there under the bridge, sitting about 8 feet tall, gripping a lantern between his long, gangly fingers.

“A troll should be under a bridge, of course,” says Jeff Hulsmann.

Hulsmann is the owner of local staple O’Malley’s Pub and also represents local nonprofit Awake the Lake. That’s the initiative that started in the ’90s to preserve the lake and has since focused on other projects to benefit the town. The pedestrian bridge was an example. As was the nearby disc golf course and, most recently, new pickleball courts.

And then there’s the troll.

“I know a good idea when I steal it,” Hulsmann says. “Just look up in Breckenridge or look up in Victor and see how popular it is.”

Yes, Breckenridge’s Isak Heartstone and Victor’s Rita the Rock Planter have captured the imagination of visitors young and old — massive, wooden trolls that became top, instant attractions. Along with several around the world, Danish artist Thomas Dambo built the forest-residing Breckenridge troll in 2018, followed by Rita atop a hill near Cripple Creek in 2023.

“We contacted Dambo’s office, and we kind of laughed,” Hulsmann says, recalling the price. “We don’t want to do the same thing everybody else is doing anyway.”

A local artist sounded better anyway, and he knew one: a metal artist with a long list of public installations over the past 15 years.

Bliss remembers picking up Hulsmann’s call last year: “‘Hey Jodie, we want a troll.'”

She understood why.

“With Awake the Lake and that committee, it’s always about trying to support local businesses,” Bliss says. “Those local businesses struggle, even though they’re fabulous restaurants.”

Indeed, says the restaurant-owning Hulsmann: “We could not survive just on the local population; Palmer Lake has a couple thousand people, and we can’t just rely on feeding the people here between the seven of us (restaurants). We have to bring people in from the outside.”

That’s what trolls do best, it seems.

In 2020, Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park added 14-foot Halvor Flowstone to its set of attractions. And a look at Dambo’s website shows trolls recently expanding their reach in California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alabama and beyond.

What is it about trolls?

“They’re whimsical, they’re fun, and they probably remind us of stories from our childhood,” Bliss says. “They’re a little bit foreboding, a little ominous, but at the same time kind of playful. And also kind of human-formed, so they’re a little bit relatable.”

And, yes, they belong under a bridge, Hulsmann says — what will make Palmer Lake’s troll different from others in Colorado.

“Right under the bridge on the east side,” he says of the arrangement that’s been cleared by town authorities. “So if you walk around the lake, the path goes right in front of it.”

It will be named eventually — through an elementary school contest, Hulsmann is thinking. And Bliss is thinking of inviting locals to her shop “to leave their mark on the piece,” she says.

For them and for those who will come to see the troll, Bliss hopes the experience will be similar to her own experience working in the shop.

“The day I was building the face, I was just laughing the whole time,” she says.