Month: July 2001

There’s always another jackass out there

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Column by Hal Walter

Pack-Burro Racing – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE OWNER OF A COMPANY that is a major editing client of mine recently joked that he had fired me because he can’t employ anyone who actually owns a jackass. Actually, I don’t know this information firsthand. I was told by someone on “the inside,” a remarkable term when you consider that for me living anywhere east of the Front Range’s angle of repose, having a “real job,” and not owning jackasses, would be sort of like a jail sentence.

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A mountain called ‘Ed’

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Essay by Lou Bendrick

Geography – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE THING I DON’T LIKE about house guests is the fact that they’re nosy and ask meddlesome questions. Questions about geography, for instance.

“What’s that mountain?,” they’ll ask, pointing to the snow-capped behemoth outside my kitchen window.

“That,” I’ll say stammering, wracking my brain, “is…Big Pointy.”

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The Great Salida Badger Fight

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Article by Roger Henn

Local Lore – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

IT WAS DURING the Depression, and our family was so poor we didn’t even have an automobile. Wherever we had to go, we generally either walked or rode our bikes.

We boys made astonishingly long trips on bicycles. These were without the fancy gears of today’s machines, and going uphill meant pushing the pedals a lot harder than going on the level. The king of bikes in that day was the Iver Johnson, a hardy bike that — like the Model T Ford — was available only in black. It could hold up under the day-after-day task of carrying the 150 or so newspapers we carried on Denver Post routes.

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Of course it’s a virtual river

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Essay by Ed Quillen

Water – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

ONE ITEM in my pile of looming work was a short article about plans to enhance the Arkansas River corridor through Salida. Another was a book to review (Virtual Rivers: Lessons from the Mountain Rivers of the Colorado Front Range, by Ellen E. Wohl, published in 2001 by Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-08484-6).

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Metalworkers will gather and show in Salida

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Brief by Central Staff

Art – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Every summer since 1996, Salida has hosted a small convention that provides a bonus for art lovers.

It’s the annual gathering of COMA — the Colorado Metalworkers Association, which has about 175 members: jewelers, designers, metal sculptors, stone cutters, students, and teachers.

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Photographer Dan Downing: Getting the Light Right

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Article by Ed Quillen

Art – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

WHEN ONE IS NEW to photography, Dan Downing recalls, it’s all about recording the subject matter that appears in the viewfinder. But eventually, “you realize that it’s all about light. You’re working with the light reflected from objects, not the objects themselves. Light is everything in photography, and if you learn to get that right, the rest follows.”

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Riding the Tiger: Town Planning at a Crossroads

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Essay by Kenneth Munsell

Growth – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

I SAW GEORGE at the lumber yard a week or so ago. He lives in Roslyn, a nearby small town in the mountains. He moved there perhaps 10 or 15 years ago, bought a house cheap and has survived, perhaps even prospered, since that time. The picturesque, old, coal-mining community fell on hard times after the mines closed in the late 1950s. Many residents even locked their homes and just walked away — who’d want to buy a house there? The town became virtually a ghost town.

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Golden Opportunities for Activist Historians

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Essay by Laura Mccall

Growth – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

IN The American West as Living Space, historian and Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Wallace Stegner asked his readers to consider the West “as both a space alive with all manner of beings and as a space to be lived in and responded to,” cherished and preserved. Stegner noted that urban and rural sprawl threaten most regions of the United States yet pose particular dangers to the American West. Uniquely delicate ecosystems, limited wildlife habitat for scores of endangered species, and sustainable water supplies are environmental realities. The nature of current development, with its emphasis on tract homes over former farm and rangeland, coupled with the peculiarly Western dependence on the automobile, are eroding our sense of community and identification with the land and the past.

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‘No-Growth’ is not the solution, or the problem

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Column by George Sibley

Growth – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

ONE OF THE MOST PERNICIOUS growth-at-any-cost arguments is the one that says that without economic growth our children will have to leave their homes and make their living elsewhere. This argument claims that our real economic problem in the West is “strident opposition to development that stifles opportunities for our children and forces our children outward.”

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No-Growthers are destroying western communities

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Essay by Stephen Lyons

Growth – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

My 21-year-old daughter is finally leaving the small western college town she grew up in for a large West Coast city, and I couldn’t be happier. After low wages and a cul de sac of career opportunities she finally figured out that her quality of life would increase educationally, culturally and, most importantly, vocationally in a metropolitan setting.

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Just swatting away as Nature intended

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Letter from Slim Wolfe

Wildlife – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

“All God’s critters got a place in the choir,

some sing lower and some sing higher,

some sing out loud on the telephone wire

and others just clap their hands….”

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Heard Around the West

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Brief by Betsy Marston

Western Life – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Bouncing Bambi

Boing, boing, boing … Ridgway, Colo., sculptor Clifton Barr looked up from work in his metal and wood studio and saw a large, antlered deer “jumping like a bucking horse” in the neighbor’s yard, reports the Ouray County Plaindealer. Barr did a double take and took off his glasses just to make sure, but when he walked outside the deer was still bouncing. On a trampoline. “He gave me one look and with a leap” — this one off the trampoline — “he was off and running.”

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Keyboards in the Sagebrush

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Brief by Central Staff

Writing – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Ever want to write about the West, but weren’t sure where to start, or what genre to use?

Then you might want to look into “Writing the West,” a five-day conference scheduled for July 21-26 at Western State College in Gunnison.

It will cover just about every way to write about the West, from poetry and screenplays to songs and novels.

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South Park wins a round in water fight with Aurora

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Brief by Central Staff

Water – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Some of South Park’s groundwater is safe — at least for a while — from the City of Aurora after a water court judge ruled against the city.

Aurora had applied for a “conjunctive use plan” for the Sportsmen’s Ranch near Jefferson at the foot of Kenosha Pass.

Under that plan, during the occasional wet years, Aurora would put water in the aquifer to store it for withdrawal during dry years. In essence, it would have been an underground storage reservoir.

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Almost the phone directory we wanted

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Brief by Central Staff

Communications – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Sometimes we think of this magazine as an experiment in applied cultural geography — that is, we want more and more people to think that there’s a part of this world that can be defined as “Central Colorado.”

So we’re always pleased to see Central Colorado appear in business names or on regional facilities (such as the airport in Buena Vista).

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Burro racers start season in Lasauces

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Brief by Central Staff

Pack-Burro Racing – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Central Colorado’s only indigenous sport is pack-burro racing, now in its 53rd season.

The season began with a 13-mile race in Lasauces on June 9.

Where’s Lasauces?

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‘No Vacancy’ signs get a workout in July

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Brief by Central Staff

Tourism – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazin

If you’re looking for a motel room in Chaffee County, July is when you’ll have to look the hardest, because that’s when room occupancy peaks — 86.3% last year, and 91.6% in 1999.

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Suspicious fire destroys Park County court clerk’s office

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Brief by Central Staff

Fairplay – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Park County got a new courthouse in Fairplay a few years ago — and now it needs to rebuild the court clerk’s office, which was nearly destroyed by a fire on May 31.

The fire, which demolished the equipment and computers in the 816-square-foot office and caused smoke damage in the courtroom, caused the postponement of some court proceedings. However, no irreplaceable records were lost.

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Too bad we can’t ask the creek how to pronounce its name

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Brief by Central Staff

Language – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

American spelling generally manages without accent marks, but proper names often arrive with the marks, and we try to use them.

Thus we refer to Cañon City instead of Canyon City or Canon City, and it’s in Frémont County, rather than Fremont County. That’s because it is named for John Charles Frémont, and that’s how “the Great Pathmarker” spelled his name.

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Going retro to the show

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Brief by Central Staff

Rural life – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

There are people who suggest that our part of the world is somewhat “behind the times,” and now there’s some evidence that they’re right, at least in one respect.

That would be drive-in movie theaters, which have been disappearing rapidly in the past couple of decades. Typically, they were built at the edge of town, and as the town grew, the land became too valuable to use for a drive-in.

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Lake County removes sheriff from office

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Brief by Central Staff

Law Enforcement – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Lake County Sheriff George Sheers lost his job on June 5 when voters recalled him from office and elected Ed Holte, a former state trooper, to fill out the remainder of the term.

Of the 4,513 registered voters in Lake County, 1,410 (31.2%) went to the polls, to vote Sheers out of office by a 925-460 margin.

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We know it’s not what they meant, but …

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Brief by Central Staff

Communications – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Park County residents will see their telephone rates go up by 20¢ a month, as the county increases its monthly 911 surcharge from 50¢ to 70¢. This will finance some immediate upgrades for emergency response, and eventually, a Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system that works with the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system.

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Curious about Colorado water issues?

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Brief by Central Staff

Water – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Curious about Colorado water issues?

Just about every imaginable topic — from recreational instream flows to the election of water conservancy district boards — will be addressed at the 26th annual Colorado Water Workshop, which runs July 25-27 at the Western State College campus in Gunnison.

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Volunteers needed to repair mountains

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Brief by Central Staff

Outdoor recreation – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

“Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints.” That’s good advice for back-country travel, but if too many people leave footprints, the landscape still suffers.

That’s the situation on many of Colorado’s 54 14,000-foot peaks, where footprints evolve into trails that damage tundra and disturb wildlife.

With some work, much of this damage and disturbance can be repaired or prevented, and that’s where the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative comes into play.

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Rare water election will be July 10

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Brief by Central Staff

Water – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

A rare kind of election — only the fourth one in Colorado history — is scheduled for July 10. It’s for a seat on the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District Board of Directors.

There are nine directors. One serves at-large, and there are two from each of the district’s four divisions, which coincide with school-district boundaries: Buena Vista, Salida, Cotopaxi, and Westcliffe.

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One for Nancy Drew or Nero Wolfe

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Brief by Central Staff

Tourism – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

We were talking with a local restaurant owner, who need not be named here, and he said he was mystified by the comings and goings among his flatware (the knives and spoons and forks that most of us call “silverware,” but since it’s seldom made of silver, it’s really flatware).

Every May, some disappears, and since this restaurateur used to run the river, “I’m pretty sure it goes into some boatman apartments or campsites.”

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Briefs from the San Luis Valley

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Brief by Marcia Darnell

San Luis Valley – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

He Went That-A-Way!

The Old West returned to South Fork recently — a bank robbery took place, complete with a diversion and a (temporary) getaway. Rio Grande County Bank was robbed of several thousand dollars at the same time a building was set on fire on Wolf Creek Pass. The suspect was nabbed near Montrose but the money is missing. An accomplice? Hidden treasure? Law enforcement officials are on the trail.

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Salida has a topless pool for the summer

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Brief by Central Staff

Salida – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

To put it one way, Salida again has an outdoor swimming pool. To put it another way, it’s a topless pool.

The roof had to be removed after the Big Spring Dump of May 3-6 because some wooden support beams cracked under the weight of four feet of wet snow.

That closed the pool for a couple of weeks, as cranes removed the roof, but by Memorial Day, it was open again for summer swimming.

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What geologists have to say about Summitville

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Brief by Central Staff

Mining – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Ever since the Summitville Mine closed in 1992, it’s been often in the news. The open-pit gold mine, at the headwaters of the Alamosa River in Rio Grande County, had already been under state scrutiny for water pollution.

When the mine closed, its owner — Galactic Resources of Canada — filed for bankruptcy after producing $82 million in gold. And now clean-up costs have already exceeded $150 million.

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The day the dancing stopped at Little Prairie Preserve

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Essay by Ben Long

Wildlife – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

IT HAPPENED on the Dancing Prairie Preserve, one square mile of shortgrass prairie in northwestern Montana’s Tobacco Valley. The preserve is a quiet patch of grassland just south of the border with Canada. It looks like a deserted golf course, with its shaggy carpet of bunchgrass and scattered Ponderosa pine. The Galton Range rises priestly black on the horizon, delaying the spring sunrise.

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Western Water Report: 7 July 2001

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KANSAS VS COLORADO DECISION

The US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, awarded Kansas $23 million to compensate for Colorado violating their compact on the Arkansas River. The award included interest from 1986 until Colorado stopped depleting Kansas’ share of the river. Colorado failed to curtail groundwater pumping within the river alluvium until a few years ago when the State Engineer adopted rules requiring augmentation for junior depletions.

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