Review by Ed Quillen
Growth – April 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine
Little Town Blues: Voices from the Changing West
by Raye C. Ringholz, photos by K.C. Muscolino
Published in 1992 by Gibbs-Smith Publishing
Peregrine Smith Books, P.O. Box 667, Layton UT 84041
ISBN: 0-87905-447-6
ALTHOUGH NONE of the three towns — Moab, Utah; Sedona, Arizona; Jackson, Wyoming — profiled by Raye Ringholz is in Colorado, the symptoms she describes certainly sound familiar: “open spaces studded with subdivisions … ridgelines marred by luxury view homes, historic buildings razed, and the unique personalities of our western towns wiped out.”
She ponders the physical transformations when a town is invaded by People of Money, but more importantly, she delves into the associated social and cultural changes.
A native of Park City, Utah, Ringholz points out that its course from ramshackle mining town to big-time ski resort brought benefits — stimulating newcomers, improved economy, increased educational and cultural opportunities.
But they came at a price. No more clown days on the ski slope, home-grown rodeos have vanished, and the local paper never runs an April Fool’s Day edition. They lost their “funky little town.”
With that as her general theme, she examines Moab as it went from mining town to mountain-bike haven, with an activist population of “ecologically minded newcomers” who “came explicitly for the small-town atmosphere” that they’re losing.
Ringholz’s trip to Sedona included some chanting at a medicine wheel on the edge of town, after she got the spirit-keeper’s permission to enter.
Sedona went from art colony and low-rent retirees to New Age Mecca, complete with a real-estate agent who senses the vibrations to help her clients “find the right place” in this vortex of 54 art gallerie, four golf courses, five tennis clubs, 29 motels, and 43 real-estate offices.
One long-time resident recalls that he knew everybody in town by their car, and “you’d always stop to chat. Nowadays it is impossible to find a parking place, much less stop in the street to visit.”
In 20 years, Teton County, Wyoming, went from 5,000 to 13,000 people. The growth meant Jackson had chains instead of ma-and-pa stores: B&W Market to Safeway, Silver Spur to Sizzler, Teton Gables Cafe to McDonald’s, Lumley’s Drugstore to Albertson’s Pharmacy, etc.
Long-time residents got priced out of their rental houses, and to them, the $137,000 house is a fantasy, not “a perfect starter home.” Service workers found themselves commuting 40 miles one-way, and didn’t develop roots either where they lived or worked.
JACKSON DIVIDED. “The people who migrated to Jackson for its wild scenery, outdoor recreation and frontier flavor started clamoring for paved roads, airport expansion, and increased cultural facilities. Instead of fitting into frontier life themselves, they tried to impose upon their new home the gentrification of the places they had left. Polarization of the community resulted.”
Thus, “old-timers became resentful because they felt that new lifestyles that they didn’t want, need, or respect were being foisted on them. The fancy clothes, French bistros, and health-food markets seemed out of place and supplanted the stores and restaurants they needed, enjoyed, and could afford.”
There’s plenty more in Little Town Blues that should be of interest. If those changes aren’t happening here yet, they soon will be, for as Ringholz notes, “Rural areas that have been ‘discovered’ as resorts have singular qualities that warrant protection: authentic Victorian houses … natural ridgelines on surrounding hills … pastures with cattle grazing around haystacks; mountain meadows filled with wildflowers and game…inviting waterways; and a diverse population that takes time to be neighbors.”
But is there a way to keep from turning into “imitation Swiss Alpine villages or sprawling Anywhere, U.S.A.?”
Given American freedoms of mobility and money, it’s impossible to bar the door and maintain the status quo. And how do you go back to being a mining town if there’s no market for the minerals? Or to being a railroad town when the train doesn’t stop here any more?
CONTROLLED GROWTH may sound appealing to some, but as economist Thayne Robson says, “I don’t know any place that has been able to effectively impose a controlled growth policy … Towns are either too successful or they’re not successful enough. If you can find one anywhere in the West that you think is just right, please call it to my attention.”
Yet untrammeled growth means losing what made the towns fit to live in. So is there an answer?
Rlngholz proposes strong county land-use planning, with the plan updated every 10 years. However, nobody can point to a place where that has worked. Better, perhaps, to try her advise to “envision what kind of community you want, and work toward that end” — and work in ways other than the empowerment of government bureaucracies.
Even if she doesn’t have the answers, Rlngholz has good eyes and asks the right questions. Little Town Blues should be required reading for every county commissioner, newspaper editor, and community activist hereabouts. Those other towns didn’t know what was coming, and if we blow it, it should be for some other reason.