Essay by Tim Willoughby
Geography – November 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE MEDIA RELISHED reporting Ken Lay’s sale of two homes in Aspen. The former Enron exec, who became the poster boy of corporate malfeasance, was President Bush’s major source of campaign funds in both his Texas governor race and his 2000 presidential campaign. But Lay had to liquidate quickly to build up his defense fund.
Voyeurs of America’s royalty have an envy-hate relationship with our plutocratic patriarchs. But Lay’s Colorado come-uppance offers an additional irony, one that makes Aspen natives laugh over the foolishness of foreigners (a term which covers anyone who didn’t implant in the Rocky Mountains several generations ago — especially Texans).
Aspen has a few years lead in the acquisition of second home residents. But the pattern is repeating itself in countless Colorado valleys, which now — in a reverse of historical trends — have more money than land.
In Aspen, pioneer homes were purchased and rehabilitated, or torn down and replaced with Victorian look-alikes, and condos filled in the empty lots.
So newcomers started buying more marginal land. Several decades ago, houses begin appearing in floodplains, at the bottom of avalanche zones, and at the end of long steep driveways that are not negotiable in winter.
Although natives questioned the wisdom of constructing homes on such suspect sites, the newcomers proceeded with the arrogance that often comes with excess income. Take the newcomer who bought a small one-story Victorian house on the east end of Aspen. The house belonged to one of the last mining families to sell out and move to warmer, quieter Grand Junction.
The new owner announced that he intended to put a new concrete foundation under the house with a full basement to make it larger. And an Aspen native warned him that houses on the east end of Aspen weren’t built with basements for a reason.
The new owner dismissed such folk wisdom, however, and never even inquired about that reason. Then the basement excavators discovered a twelve-foot diameter glacial granite boulder dead center under the house.
The area where Ken Lay purchased two homes was nicknamed Oklahoma Flats, an uncomplimentary Dust Bowl tag. In the boom days of the 1890s, the Flats were home to the last immigrants to arrive — Swedish and Italian miners and their families. In those days, the neighborhood sat on the lowest rung of stratified ethnic enclaves.
THAT PLAIN BESIDE THE Roaring Fork is below Aspen’s main streets, and is consequently colder in the winter months. In warm weather, Oklahoma Flats is prone to flooding, and it’s the breeding ground for the peskiest and fastest procreating mosquitoes in the region.
Once upon a time, sewer lines on Oklahoma Flats discharged directly into the river because the area lay below the level of the 1890’s pipes. And even after Aspen built a treatment plant, the abandoned lines continued to contribute an earthy odor.
In the 1950s, the Flats’ was home to a friendly menage-a-trois of two brothers with one wife.
One of the brothers was a frequent guest of the county jail, due to his self-imposed incarceration for inebriation. Although it was only a short walk from the jail to his home, he had to negotiate a leaning and moving footbridge on the way, so he wisely waited for his hangover to clear before leaving his cell. The man was also acclaimed for ridding his favorite cottonwood tree of ants — by using dynamite. Both he and the tree survived.
Understandably enough, Oklahoma Flats was Aspen’s last neighborhood to sprout oversized second homes. Yet soon after purchasing one, Ken Lay sold it to someone who paid double what any sane investor would pay.
That was something the “folk wisdom” crowd had come to expect, however. And Lay’s generous contributions to Aspen’s environmental center merely struck them as typical hypocrisy. But when it came to understanding Lay, their “ah-ha” moment had come early.
Aspen natives knew what kind of deals Lay made way back when they first heard that this enterprising entrepreneur, the master manipulator of the energy market, had spent millions of dollars on, of all places, Oklahoma Flats.
Even Arthur Anderson can’t turn bottomland into peak resort property.
Tim Willoughby grew up in Aspen, and now teaches in California.
