By Martha Quillen
Mention America’s Great Divide today and most people will think of the partisan divisions growing between Trump supporters and critics, blacks and whites, men and women, and other political rivals. But when I first moved to Colorado the most talked-about Great Divide was the geographic barrier that divided rivers flowing east from rivers flowing west.
I’ve been trying to figure out how and where Central Colorado – the region served (and somewhat created) by this magazine – fits into last month’s topic, “Great Divide” political geography. The Great Divide being not the physical Continental Divide but the demographic metropolitan-nonmetropolitan divide, a major factor in the 2016 election.
By Mike Rosso
The world’s longest off-pavement cycling route is host to an annual race, the Tour Divide. It involves climbing 200,000 total vertical feet (or summiting Mount Everest from sea-level seven times). It begins in Banff, Alberta, Canada and ends in Antelope Wells, New Mexico – 2,745 miles later.
Last year, 143 riders began the race and 82 finished. Among those finishers was Kent Davidson of Salida. He took 24 days to complete the race, averaging 115 miles per day on grueling 12-hour days.
Kent, who moved to Colorado from Arkansas eight years ago, described the Tour Divide as “The most expensive free race you’ll ever do,” noting that racers don’t get even as much as a t-shirt for their Herculean efforts.
By George Sibley
Thirty-five water-user groups from both sides of the Continental Divide recently concluded a “Colorado River Cooperative Agreement” concerning the waters of the Upper Colorado River – both the water still in that river’s tributaries in Grand, Summit and Eagle Counties, and the water diverted out of those rivers into the South Platte basin.
This situation lies a little to the north of Central Colorado, but it is nonetheless worth watching down here in Central Colorado as this agreement unfolds. “Central Colorado” is, after all, a region of the state fiendishly created by this magazine’s founders Ed and Martha Quillen to include headwaters on both the East and West Slopes. (Not to mention on Colorado’s “South Slope,” the Upper Rio Grande – technically East Slope but recently treated like the West Slope by the rest of the East Slope: a place to go for more water.)
