Column by Hal Walter
Agriculture – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
A FAVORITE OLD RANCHER once told me: “It’s better to get where you’re going on a slow horse than to go to the hospital on a fast horse.”
Frankly, I avoid riding anything with ears that short.
Article by John Orr
Water – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Fryingpan-Arkansas Project debt
The Fryingpan-Arkansas project affects the Arkansas River from stem to stern in Colorado. It moves water from the headwaters of the Fryingpan River under the Great Divide through the Boustead Tunnel to satisfy some of the agricultural needs in the Lower Arkansas Valley and to slake the thirst of Coloradans south of Monument Divide. The project’s facilities are also used for storage for water moved out of basin.
Article by Tom Purvis
Recreation – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
THERE ARE TRAILS all over. Deer, elk and cows all make trails that go to watering holes, grassy areas and safe cover. If there’s a good spot for fishing, a pretty waterfall or a place up high with a good view there will usually be a trail leading there. If there’s a relatively easy way to get up a mountainside or into a canyon, a trail will usually follow that route. Some trails are planned and constructed, and some trails just happen.
Column by John Mattingly
Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Back in the mid-1980s I was in New York City working with various financiers on omnibus loan re-structuring bailouts for farmers, who, at that time, were going through the same general credit crisis now playing out broadly (and with much more attention) in today’s world economy. I was a principal in a small firm, Judson Securities, which sought funding for a program we called EIO, Equity Investment Opportunity, a fund that, with modest success, matched ag-friendly investors with good farmers.
Column by George Sibley
Politics – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.–Henry Thoreau, Walden
RONALD REAGAN had one thing right when he was elected in 1980: it was “morning in America.”
Letter from Nelson Walker
History – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
I enjoyed the articles by Charles Price in the October and November issues of Colorado Central Magazine about the Espinosa brothers. Recently, I wrote Mr. Price to provide him with additional information about the location of the site near Cañon City where Vivian Espinosa was killed. Mr. Price identified the site as being at Grape Spring, which he based on information contained in the biography, Tom Tobin, Frontiersman, written by James Perkins. In my correspondence with Mr. Price I explained that I disagreed with Mr. Perkins assertion that Vivian was killed at Grape Spring, and I presented information that indicated that Espinosa was not killed at Grape Spring, but rather at a place a considerable distance from there, and possibly at a location known as Nash Spring.
Letter from Slim Wolfe
Capitalism – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
Remember when foreign money started moving into Colorado? Back in the late ’70s, when I first arrived, it was common to hear locals say “Don’t Californicate Colorado,” or “If God had intended Texans to ski, he would have made bullpoop white.” So imagine what it must feel like, being a “local” in some place like India or Bali, when all that foreign capital starts moving in to fill a vacuum or just to elbow out the previous local economy. The jobs created by the new money are useful, or even necessary, but the whole scheme isn’t really sustainable, since it depends on global money machinations and distant markets, a house of cards which flip and flap according to whatever liquidity crisis or rumors on the world stock exchanges happen to be current. There’s no connection to your basic food and survival chain, gathering nuts or raising livestock or making shoes for your community. You’re a puppet on a chain, jerking around from paycheck to paycheck, serving a class of people of an alien economic stratum and, maybe, alien religion, culture, and ethnic origin, too.
Letter from Roger Williams
History – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
DRC Brown, CEO of Aspen Skiing Co., pages 14-15 in the November edition: “Darcy, the junior Brown … attended high school at a boarding school in New Hampshire….”
Essay by Martha Quillen
Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Although they are clearly human creations, something that we invented and that we presumably control, I tend toward the idea that no one really manages them, or even truly understands them. Human inventions or not, global monetary systems have grown and evolved beyond our control.
Letter from Simon Halburian
Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
In his “presidential platform” letter in the December issue, Slim Wolfe says “No more war, no more NATO, overseas bases, aggression, or aid, no Pentagon, no space program, no paranoid bullying. I ain’t afraid.”
Review by Lynda La Rocca
Books – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
I HAVE TO ADMIT that I had a little trouble selecting some “favorites” for this column because, frankly, I didn’t read a lot of books in 2008 that were “new” to me in the sense of never having read them before. Instead, I had concentrated on rereading old favorites, many of which I’ve recommended previously in the pages of Colorado Central.
Review by Ed Quillen
History – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
A Tenderfoot in Colorado
by Richard Baxter Townshend
First published in 1923
Published in 2008 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 978-0-87081-938-4
Review by Forrest Whitman
History – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Mountain Mafia – Organized Crime in the Rockies
by Betty L. Alt and Sandra K. Wells
Published in 2008 by Cold Tree Press
ISBN 13: 978-1-58385-274-3
Review by Martha Quillen
Fiction – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Hard Face Moon
by Nancy Oswald
Published in 2008 by Filter Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-86541-089-3
Brief by Marcia Darnell
San Luis Valley – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Boom Time
A home under construction in South Fork exploded while workers were inside. The house, being built for Doug Adams, was destroyed in the blast which sent eight workers to area hospitals. The cause of the explosion is undetermined as yet.
Brief by Allen Best
History – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Part of the charm of Crested Butte is its gaily painted Victorian storefronts. But that’s the show-business part. To get a better sense of Crested Butte’s grimy past you need to walk the alleyways and visit the empty lots, where a great many coal bins, privies, and sheds, many of them graying and rotting, can be seen.
Brief by Central Staff
Media – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
For the second time in recent months, the New York Times has ventured into Central Colorado. Earlier, it was about the presidential election. This time around, it was a piece about Salida in the Dec. 5 edition aimed at readers who might be looking for place for a second home.
Brief by Ed Quillen
Local News – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
We officially start our seasons by the equinoxes (roughly March 22 and Sept. 22, when the day and night are the same length) and the solstices (longest day about June 22 and shortest about Dec. 22). And by that measure, winter started this year on Dec. 21.
Around here, though, we might observe that summer actually starts with the opening of passes that are normally closed in the winter: Marshall, Cottonwood, Independence, Old Monarch, Hagerman, Mosquito, etc. And the season ends when those roads close.
Brief by Central Staff
Climate – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Salida’s reputation as an art town has apperntaly extended to the nearby one-time railroad siding of Barrel, where several foundations remain from the days when narrow-gauge cars of limestone were transferred to standard-gauge cars until 1956.
Brief by Allen Best
Climate – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
The snowpack never completely melted this summer at the Snowmass ski area, where a mound of snow 20 feet high survived even the 80-plus days of summer. The mound is the remnant of a massive jump that was part of a snowboard terrain park built last winter.
Brief by Central Staff
Energy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
For the past couple of years, natural-gas drilling has increased significantly on Colorado’s Western Slope, especially in Garfield and Mesa counties. That trend may not continue, since prices have dropped and some companies have announced plans to cut back.
Brief by Allen Best
Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Telluride expects a hard winter, with real estate development and sales shuddering to a near stop and tourism as encouraging as dyspepsia.
Bookings are down 25 percent from last winter, a stellar season. The more apt comparison, says The Telluride Watch, is the 10 to 12 percent drop of the longer-term average.
Brief by Allen Best
Explosives – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
One Crested Butte neighborhood had a brief scare after police learned that an explosive used for avalanche control had been stashed by a renter under the front porch of a house.
“The police were freaking out. They were yelling to stay away from the porch and get out the back of the house,” Ryan Hoynacki told the Crested Butte News. “There must have been six or seven cops there.”
Brief by Allen Best
Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
No doubt about it, times are tough. But they’ve been tough before, and not that long ago. In most destination ski resorts, the real estate market skidded downhill in the early 1980s and never fully recovered for the better part of the decade.
Brief by Central Staff
Water – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
A district judge’s decision to uphold the expansion election for the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District has been appealed.
At issue is a mail-in election held in 2006 wherein voters in eastern Frémont County, and a small portion of El Paso County voted to join the conservancy district. The election was required because the district collects a property tax. An area joining the district would thus see a tax increase, and a provision in Colorado’s constitution — the TABOR Amendment — requires voter approval of tax increases.
Brief by Allen Best
Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Yellowstone Club, founded in 1999, soon became a metaphor for high-end exclusivity in the mountain valleys of the West. The ski trails were immaculate and private. Homes cost up to $20 million. Members and their guests flew into nearby Bozeman, about an hour away, on private jets.
Brief by Allen Best
Lore – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Do doctors still occasionally accept payment in something other than greenbacks, Visa and MasterCard? Dr. Alfred Bedford, a doctor based in Durango, apparently did so, at times in his career taking as payment a barnyard of animals: a donkey, a goat, and chickens. Once he accepted tamales as payment.
Brief by Allen Best
Environment – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Decades after they closed, the mines near Colorado mountain towns continue to demand attention.
Breckenridge has begun operating a $1.2 million water-treatment plant that is supposed to remove the zinc, cadmium and lead that contaminate the water coming from the Wellington-Oro Mine. The Wellington, explains the Summit Daily News, was the largest mine in Summit County from the 1880s to the 1930s. Mining there did not finally cease until 1972, or 11 years after the Breckenridge ski area began operating.
Brief by Central Staff
Mountain Life – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
As members of the Salida Business Alliance, we shared in the embarrassment resulting from some errors in the group’s calendars, which carry attractive local photos with the profits going to local beautification projects. In the 2008 calendar, November had 31 days, and January and February were in error in the 2009 version.
Comic Strip written and drawn by Monika Griesenbeck
Mountain Life – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
Essay by Jane Goetze
Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
In 1976, circumstances beyond my control forced me into temporary homelessness. For six months, I alternated between relying on the couches of friends and camping out in my car.
With the proper gear, it’s surprising how well you can fend for yourself. Of course, it helps to live in a region of the country with a tourist economy; in fact, if it weren’t for the wealthy tourists who head for Aspen, Colorado, Park City, Utah, and Sun Valley, Idaho, we might all be homeless.
