Brief by Central Staff
Media coverage – October 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine
Another Top 10 List
Planning to homestead somewhere? Some parts of Colorado, even Central Colorado, made it onto the “10 Best Places to Live the Good Life” in the August/September edition of Mother Earth News.
Mother steered readers away from “the smog-plagued strip of cities … along the foot of the mountains.
“But another of our `Ten Best’ locations is found in the mountains at the southwest corner of the state where the continental divide meanders through Saguache, Hinsdale, and Mineral counties and the San Juan and Los Garitas [La Garita?] mountain ranges. Hidden away among the Gunniston [sic], San Juan and Rio Grande National Forests is a scattering of hamlets where pass-closing winter snows demand a high degree of self-reliance and interdependence…”
Mother Earth News certainly crowded Colorado’s southwest corner, but nonetheless, Saguache County could be a good place for a Mother Earth homestead. People already grow edible food there, and the county government accommodates affordable yet nonconventional construction like strawbale homes.
Mother Earth News, however, says “Our own favorite is the town of Creede in Mineral County.”
Alas, the magazine didn’t explain how people can digest hay, which is just the only crop that will grow in either Mineral or Hinsdale County. The thought of homesteading thereabouts provokes nightmares of starvation, or maybe a reprise of Alferd Packer’s cannibalism.
Crestone, in Saguache County, was also mentioned, even though it sits against the Sangres, one of the many mountain ranges Mother ignored, and it’s some distance from “where the continental divide meanders.”
We’re not sure why so many publications have joined this quest for the perfect place to live, nor do we understand why readers should credit the media’s opinion on such matters.
— But we enjoyed one tidbit in the Mother Earth News article: the Crestone town motto: “Where inconvenience is a virtue.”
