I recently spent two weeks in Colorado with my brother and his wife, who live on a small ranch in Granby, an ‘old Colorado’ type town, made briefly famous in 2004 by Marvin Heemeyer, a disgruntled owner of a muffler/repair shop who took out his anger at town government by armoring a bulldozer and plowing down a good portion of the town. If you don’t know the story, it’s worth checking it out. Here’s a YouTube video on it. In typical Colorado style, the populace was told to ‘shelter in place’, but instead most people just went up a hill to sit and watch the action. The bulldozer was dangerous and powerful, but it was really slow too, managing a top speed of about four miles an hour, so getting injured by Marvin’s bulldozer was next to impossible.
This article however isn’t about Marvin and his bulldozer, but rather about how Colorado is changing, now that Denver and its more liberal voters now control the state, causing discontent with the more old time residents and ranchers. The most recent evidence of this is the reintroduction of wolves into Colorado. As might be expected, the people who live in areas where the wolves will be thriving (ranchers in particular), aren’t enthusiastic about having wolves around them and their families and livestock, so they voted heavily against it; while people who will never see a wolf, the residents of Denver, heavily supported it, and the measure passed by a very slim margin.
As another example of change, when I was in my early twenties, my brother and I, along with assorted friends and relatives, all lived in Fraser, a town near Granby and adjacent to a large ski area, Winter Park. We were basically ski bums for two to three years before we all went our own ways–my brother Jon and I went back to college, and my middle brother Tim to ski patrol/avalanche control at Winter Park, and then to ownership of a thriving local surveying company. I’ve always considered this era to be one of the great experiences of my life, so I enjoy returning, even though the area is not like it was then, which is the topic of this story.
When I lived there, Fraser was a hippie town populated by college age kids who were either into ‘getting back to nature’ or skiing, or most commonly, both. Impromptu parties were held far up in the mountains on a regular basis, everyone invited. On the way into town, there was a sign reading “Fraser, Leaving Planet Earth”.
Fraser was also famous for being the coldest town in the continental United States, and as “the town Goodyear put on spikes”–because of how cold it got there. As a publicity stunt Goodyear gave everyone in town snow tires.
That sign is long gone, since no ski area wants to advertise temperatures of -40 to -65 degrees. It was so cold there at night that your clothing stiffened up, and if you opened the door what looked like fog rolled in. But the real change is that the hippies and ski bums are gone, replaced by wealthy residents and yuppies from Denver. The town called Fraser, although it still exists, has been subsumed by the new town, Winter Park.
The other big change is how much building has taken place, so much so as to make the surroundings unrecognizable. Where there used to be cabins, homemade looking rentals, or just forest, there are now a lot of very expensive, nice homes, as well as plenty of new housing developments.
There is a whole different vibe at Winter Park. The mountain itself is much larger, as new sections have been opened up for skiing, plus the cost of a ticket has soared. When I was there, workers in town often got free lift tickets. Tickets now are around $250+ a day.
The biggest change perhaps is the base area, which used to be just a lodge with a limited selection of food. Now, the base area has restaurants everywhere, plus ski chalets up to seven stories high, offering a ski in/ski out experience, but you need to take an elevator.
But this isn’t an article complaining about the changes. Colorado has historically been an area of boom and bust, and now is no different. It’s in a boom period now. Yes, the residents of Denver are buying houses up in the mountains at a huge pace, and are financing their purchases by renting the houses out via Airbnb or VRBO when they aren’t spending the weekend in the mountains. However, the locals actually like this situation. There is a huge construction boom in process, and this is responsible for all the construction jobs in the Winter Park area, as well as related jobs in surveying (what my brother does), plus housing sales.
Without all this construction, normal people wouldn’t be able to afford to live up in the mountains, so although it’s sad to see things change, particularly what used to be pristine land which is now covered with condos; but if not for this no one could live up in Winter Park except the wealthy.
Even when I was there, construction was how the ski bums (including myself) earned money in the summer, without which they’d have had to leave the area. The main thing that’s different now, besides the scale of construction, is the huge role of Airbnb in today’s construction boom. Without Airbnb many people simply couldn’t afford to own homes in the mountains that are used only very part time, without collecting rent on the days they weren’t there. Change isn’t always good or bad. Usually it’s both.