Ever since the 2000 presidential election, it’s been fashionable to divide America into “Red States” and “Blue States.” That’s because the major television networks used maps that showed George W. Bush states in red and Al Gore states in blue.
This gave rise to much analysis that tied culture to politics. For instance, we were told Red Staters went to church more often. This was not true, however, of the Mountain West. Politically, it was then as red as raw beef, but only in Utah and New Mexico (both founded by religious colonists) did church attendance exceed the national average. Otherwise, from Montana to Arizona, we were so heathen that it was a wonder we didn’t see more missionaries on our doorsteps.
Gun ownership might be another factor distinguishing Red from Blue, but such statistics are hard to come by. I once called the public-relations office of the National Rifle Association and asked for a state-by-state breakdown of membership, figuring that there might be some hard data to justify all the silly generalizations I was reading back then, but the NRA told me it did not release such information, and wouldn’t say why.
Further, when I looked up social pathologies in our Red States, we were among the leaders in divorce, alcoholism, suicide, drug abuse – you name it, and we were about as far from Norman Rockwell’s America as we were from Rockwell’s studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Speaking of Massachusetts, a commonwealth so Blue that it was the only state carried by George McGovern in 1972, socially it exhibits the virtues that are supposed to shine brightest in the Red States – low divorce rate, high church attendance, low alcoholism and drug abuse, etc.
So I don’t think you can tell much about the culture of an area by how it votes in national elections. Besides, what are we to make of Colorado, the original Red State when you translate its name from Spanish? Only five years ago, Republicans controlled every statewide office except one (the exception being Attorney General Ken Salazar), both U.S. Senate seats, and five of the seven congressional seats. Now that is exactly reversed. But has Colorado culture, whatever that is, changed noticeably since 2004?
So I’m going to propose a new American Division. Central Colorado is part of Two-Lane America, and most of the nation’s population abides in Four-Lane America. Granted, there are a few four-lane stretches of highway in Central Colorado (i.e., U.S. 50 from Salida to Poncha Springs), but since these are not divided, limited-access routes like Interstate highways with their entrance and exit ramps, our roads are Two-Lane at heart.
In Two-Lane America, you find produce stands next to the road. There are many pullovers for historical markers or scenic views. Often the highway goes right through the middle of town, where there are still a few mom-and-pop enterprises, from hardware stores to cafes.
In Four-Lane America, you find nothing next to the road, with business clustered at the freeway off-ramp. By and large, those businesses are national brands: Motel 6, Super 8, Wendy’s, Wal-Mart, etc. Granted, we have our share of national franchises in Central Colorado, but they haven’t driven everything else out the way they have in Four-Lane America.
In Two-Lane America, if the map says the next road I need is on the right, I know I’ll need to turn right up ahead. In Four-Lane America, the exit could be on the left, and I may not be in the proper lane when the time comes. In Two-Lane America, if I miss the turn, I can just go around the block. In Four-Lane America, it could be miles before I can adjust for that missed turn. And when I go down the exit ramp, I may need to be in a lane other than the one I’m in, but I don’t know until I almost get there – another source of driving tension.
Two-Lane America was built to serve existing towns. Four-Lane America creates ghost towns and rots out old downtowns. I noticed this recently on a road trip to Oregon to visit our daughters.
When we got to Grand Junction, we left Two-Lane America (took us through the cores of Gunnison, Montrose, and Delta) for Four-Lane America; 75-mph Interstate 70 across the eastern Utah Desert.
There’s an exit for Thompson Springs (also known as merely Thompson). The old two-lane U.S. 6 went right through town, but I-70 runs a few miles to the north. I recalled Edward Abbey writing about boarding a train at Thompson at the end of his “Desert Solitaire” season, and when I rode the California Zephyr from Denver to Grand Junction in 1987, my seatmate was a young woman who planned to get off at Thompson, en route to the Canyonlands.
So as a railroad buff, I figured it was my duty to turn off at the Thompson exit. Right away there was a big convenience store, then a couple of miles of indifferent road leading past a highway department yard and, a mile or so later, a grove of trees.
Inside the grove was Thompson. Amtrak hadn’t stopped there since 1995, when the stop was changed to Green River, and the depot was shuttered with signs about asbestos abatement. Across the road was a diner, also closed, and an old motel with most of its windows missing. The afternoon was drawing on under a dark overcast, and yet not a single light was visible in any of the dozen or so houses. It was somewhere past creepy. It felt like a scene from the Twilight Zone.
That’s what Four-Lane America does to Two-Lane America when it gets too close. We saw further evidence in Green River, where we spent the night. There were a slew of new motels near the exit, but in the old part of town where the highway once ran, the motels were shuttered and perhaps abandoned.
It felt kind of comforting to return to Two-Lane America for the next leg, from Green River to Provo, through Price and Helper.
Helper and Salida have a lot in common. They’re both old brick railroad towns in the mountains, built at about the same time to serve the same railroad. Helper got its name because that’s where they attached helper locomotives to help trains get up the steep 2.4% grade to Soldier Summit.
Downtown Helper’s architecture is newer than Salida’s Victorian structures, but still handsome brick from the 1920s and 30s. It’s also a mining town (coal) in a way that Salida never was, and the trains still come through Helper – it’s even an Amtrak stop.
But most of Helper’s storefronts are empty; Salida looks lively by comparison. My guess is that most of the commerce of Carbon County goes to Price, the county seat just eight few miles away and big enough to support a Wal-Mart – it’s got about 8,000 people, compared to Helper’s 2,000.
My planner friend Randy Russell worked in Carbon County about 15 years ago. He got hired to do economic development, and Helper was one of his projects. He worked hard, I know. I saw a fire station (which fit well with the local architecture) built during his tenure, as well as plaques on historic buildings. Randy did what he could to attract artists and promote the cultural diversity (rather than white-bread Mormons, that part of Utah is largely Greek and Italian) tenure, as well as the scenery of nearby Nine-Mile Canyon.
But it wasn’t enough. All we found open on a Saturday morning was a gas station and the Balance Rock Eatery & Pub – which has great fluffy pancakes to go with the copious hash-browns and over-easy eggs required of a real breakfast. The Western Mining & Railroad Museum (two topics sure to get my attention) was closed on account of a major Utah holiday, Pioneer Day, which celebrates the arrival of Brigham Young and his party to the Great Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. We saw big festivals in many Utah town parks along the way – something you can’t see from Four-Lane America.
It sure puts to shame our celebration of Colorado Day (Aug. 1 because Colorado became a state on Aug. 1, 1876), which consists of free admission to state parks.
Anyway, don’t get me wrong. When I’m trying to get somewhere and that’s the main goal, I rather enjoy four lanes of limited access with cruise-control. But when I want to savor the trip as well as the destination, Two-Lane America the best place to travel.
Salida sits about 90 miles from an Interstate, be it I-25 or I-70. Gunnison and Saguache are even more removed. Alamosa is about 75 miles from I-25. Only Leadville lies near an interstate, and that’s a 25- or 33-mile trip that involves crossing the Great Divide on two lanes.
While there are a few people hereabouts who advocate running four lanes into our part of the world, we ought to be grateful that no one harkens to their pleas. Staying in Two-Lane America means that, in general, those who come here want to come here for what we have, not just pass through here when they want to be somewhere else.
Ed Quillen, who has lived in Salida since 1978, helped found Colorado Central in 1994. He is a former managing editor of the Mountain Mail and a regular contributor to The Denver Post and High Country News.