Brief by Ed Quillen
Regional News – January 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Hard Winter?
For years, some locals have joked that we needed a hard winter to discourage immigration, perhaps even to encourage outward migration by some of the lightweights who have settled here in recent years, and have come to assume that our winters are fairly mild.
While the days were rather mild as we went to press in mid-December, snow and ice still remained from big storms that hit Central Colorado several weeks earlier.
The first big storm arrived on Nov. 21, with snow continuing into the next day. Salida got 15 inches, with Cotopaxi getting about 18 and Nathrop 6 inches. It was especially welcome at Monarch, which had opened on Nov. 20.
Another storm came at the end of the month. It didn’t bring nearly as much snow to Salida (Crested Butte got 32 inches, though), but the thermometer sure dropped. Salida’s low was -12°F on Nov. 30, Westcliffe was -20° that morning, Saguache was a relatively tropical -6°, Leadville hit -22°, and Gunnison recorded lows of -20° on Dec. 1, followed by -28°, -29°, and -25° on succeeding days.
“I thought for a while we would have another of those all-day-below-zero days, but it was not to be,” wrote Bruce Bartleson in the Gunnison Country Times. The temperature crept “up to 4 or 5 degrees by early-to-mid afternoon on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. It got up to a balmy overnight low of -2° on the 5th, so the cold snap – by our standards – ended.”
There were many reports of frozen water pipes throughout Central Colorado.
Drought over?
November of 2004 was the snowiest November in recent memory, with Salida getting 21 total inches of snow with a moisture content of 1.69 inches.
Mike Kerrigan, general manager of KVRH and KBVC radio stations in Salida, checked records and found that November of 2003 had only 2 inches of snow, total moisture 0.37 inch; November 2002 had no measurable snow and 0.22 inch of moisture. On average since 1948, Salida gets 7.4 inches of November snow, amounting to 0.49 inch of moisture.
So this water year (differs from a calendar year in that it runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30) appears to be off to a good start. According to the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, which operates the Snotel measuring network, all our basins were above average in moisture content in mid-December: Arkansas, 102%; South Platte, 105%; Rio Grande, 106%; Gunnison 122%.
[Ted, the official security system at Central World Headquarters, died from old age on Dec. 7, 2004. A chow-husky mix, she was born in March of 1989, and faithfully welcomed friends, family, customers, bill-collectors, process servers and perhaps even robbers for nearly 16 years.]
Costly warmth
So it’s been cold outside, and that means spending more to stay warm inside. Household natural gas consumption in Colorado typically rises 91% from October to November, on account of colder weather, and this year, natural-gas prices have risen substantially from last year for a variety of reasons; in Colorado, the main cause is the construction of pipelines that allow producers to export more natural gas to California, thus making us bid against the Golden State for gas from our own state.
That affects electric rates, too, since so much power is generated with natural gas boilers and turbines. Sangre de Cristo Electric, the co-op that serves much of Central Colorado, has announced rate increases of about 7% as of the first of the year. Xcel Energy (we keep wanting to call it Public Service Co.), which serves much of the rest of us here, announced a similar rate increase, noting that 48% of its electricity comes from burning natural gas.
Based on our perusals of classified ads in area newspapers, firewood prices have remained relatively stable – in the neighborhood of $100 a cord, delivered, with great variance depending on the variety of wood (gambel oak burns hottest), length, splitting, stacking, etc.
As for coal, which generally offers the best deal in BTUs per dollar, we haven’t seen any for sale hereabouts in years, and to the best of our knowledge, the nearest source would be the Paonia area. Frémont County’s last coal mine closed four years ago, and the mines of Huerfano and Las Animas counties closed several years before that.
Observations
“But I also believe there is a smug arrogance that surrounds most liberals in America today. It’s a mean-spirited condescension that thwarts any possibility of dialogue with ‘the other side.’ I have to believe that most conservatives are NOT as extreme or hypocritical as John Ashcroft and James Dobson and their ilk. But liberal Democrats don’t give those people an alternative. And if they continue to be as judgmental as the people they condemn, they can only hope to marginalize their voice even more in the years to come.”
Jim Stiles in the Canyon Country Zephyr
p. 3, Dec. 2004 – Jan. 2005 edition.
“Just as ABC is part of the media, so are the Silverton Standard and the Dove Creek Press. Do you really think we all get together and decide which direction to slant our coverage?”
Jonathan Thompson in the Silverton Standard
p. 2, Dec. 10, 2004 edition
“[Tony] Smith explained the very scientific method he uses to arrive at a fair price [for locally cut Christmas trees]. ‘I look at the tree, I grab it, and I try to remember how hard it was to drag out of the forest. Then I price it.'”
Toni M. Todd in the Gunnison Country Times
p. 11, Nov. 25 edition
Petitions are circulating in Leadville to recall members of the hospital board after a physician there, Dr. Wayne Callen, was suspended by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners. This has inspired many letters to the newspaper, as well as this editorial comment:
“It has been interesting that over the past months, many people have weighed in to speculate on how the information regarding Callen’s practice has gotten to the CBME in the first place – who the tattletales are, so to speak. There has been virtually no interest expressed in whether or not the matters that the CBME is examining are legitimate.”
Marcia Martinek in the Leadville Herald-Democrat
p. 5, Nov. 18, 2004 edition
Contrasting Experiences
In parts of our sparsely populated area, the bad news is that if you run into car trouble, it might be a long time before somebody comes by. The good news is that the passerby always stops to help. Or at least that’s the way it used to be. Consider these two letters in the Dec. 2 edition of the Westcliffe Wet Mountain Tribune:
Good News: “…while going through the pass we hit a large rock in the road. A few minutes later we realized we had a flat tire and pulled off. While trying to change it, Cliff Hobby, who works for Qwest, passed us. He turned around and came to our rescue…. It’s great living in a community where strangers are willing to stop and help others.”
Bad News: “I had a flat tire and pulled off the road just past MacKensie Junction. With hood up and tail gate up, flashers on, belongings on the ground, I waved and tried to get someone to help me. After 20-plus cars went by, I decided there was no help, so I closed up the car and started to walk the mile to get help.
Potent Stuff
The creatures in the Lake County Animal Shelter had to be moved temporarily in November while the floor was repainted with a new type of paint.
What was wrong with the old paint? According to Leadville Mayor Bud Elliott, dog urine dissolved the old paint.
So, if you really need to strip some paint and you’re pressed for a solvent. . . .
Tales of two cities
Sales tax revenues in Buena Vista were down by 8.84% from 2003 in August, so the town implemented a spending freeze effective Nov. 17 until the year’s end.
Meanwhile in Gunnison, the city government raised pay by an average of 7.5% for all 80 municipal employees, with the goal of making local salaries comparable to those for similar positions in other Colorado towns.
[Curtis Imrie’s racing burros, Wellstone and Willie, returned to their day jobs as they packed for a Colorado Lottery commercial which was filmed and aired last fall. These donkeys joined their stablemates Remedy and Japhy in the ad for simultaneous Big Gulps outside a Minturn convenience store while the “prospectors” were inside hoping to strike it rich with the lottery’s “gold card.”]
Grouse decline
All over the West, sage grouse are in decline, and that includes the largest population, found in the upper Gunnison basin. In 2003, there were 2,001 birds found in the official Colorado Division of Wildlife Census. There were 1,992 in 2004.
That’s not much of a decline, but it’s nonetheless worrisome because the Gunnison Sage Grouse was recognized as a distinct species in 2000 and is now a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act.
Disease and drought may account for some of the decline, but there’s also habitat loss. The birds like open ranchland, but in the past 50 years, the number of ranching families in the Gunnison Valley has declined from 75 to fewer than 20. Many of those ranches turn into subdivisions of 35-acre lots, and those aren’t good habitat for sage grouse.
Delivery — and Pick-up
Carol Fish delivers a lot of newspapers in and around Buena Vista: The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times – about 200 papers on weekdays and 470 on Sundays.
And she picks them up – she now collects old newspapers for recycling. Customers place their papers in standard recycling containers, and for $5 and a phone call (719-395-4291 if you’re in her area), she’ll come and get them.
“I want to provide this low-cost alternative because recycling is so important,” she told the Chaffee County Times.
Quarquicentennial
That’s our Latinate term for 125th anniversary. Salida was founded in 1880, and so it turns 125 in 2005. Its newspaper, the Mountain Mail, was also founded that year. We’re sure there will be some sort of celebration by both, although we haven’t heard any plans yet.
Buena Vista turned 125 in 2004, and celebrated all year. Part of the celebration was an essay contest which attracted 84 entries in four age categories. The topic was “What makes Buena Vista special,” and here are some reasons from several of the winning essays:
“You could walk out into your yard and come nose to nose with a deer. Very few places give you that opportunity.” — Jennifer Pratt
“Franchises have yet to take over the business of family restaurants, and people still stop cars in the middle of the street to hold conversations.” — Rachel Gioscia
“Having just one stoplight simplifies our lives. We can tell people ‘Meet me at the stoplight,’ and there is no uncertainty.” — Wendell Kent
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