Move west (Denver, Durango, Montrose: real estate, to rent, crime)

[fly free]

Hello everyone,

I have lived here in Florida for 18 months now and I came from the Pocono’s in PA. The only good thing about it here is that it’s summer all the time. I do however; miss the four seasons and the sports that go with it. (e.g.; ski, camping, horse back riding) + I use to be an airline crewmember and have seen the west many times and contemplated moving there.

I am interested in a place as follows if it even exists:

A small town, or out crop, not to far from the mountains. I would have to rent at first. I don’t want to live in traffic jams and I don’t care if I have to drive a long distance to get to the basic stores. I know the trade off for this would be the peace and quite and the beauty of the mountains.
I am also interested in working as a ranger, perhaps in a state park or related field. If anyone has any info that would help get me started on the search for my move west I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you all and have a wonderful day

Brian

[jazzlover]

I'll answer your last question. Getting a job a state park ranger or national forest ranger or national park ranger is very tough, unless you have a specialized degree (forestry, range science, wildlife management, etc.). Because more and more of the job involves direct law enforcement, training in that field might also be a requirement. Quite honestly, colleges have been pumping out those types of people for decades--far more than there are available jobs.

Though I don't think it is quite a prevalent as it used to be, those folks tended to be transferred a lot, as well. A couple of friends of mine, both now retired from the Forest Service, were transferred about every 4-6 years or so in their careers. Both had stints in Denver and one was in D.C. for several years. So much for being out in the "great outdoors."

Want to work outside in remote areas of Colorado? Go to work as a roughneck in the gas fields. That's where most of those kind of jobs are these days.

The long distance driving you say you are willing to do is going to become pretty much unaffordable on typical wages in rural Colorado when gasoline is $4.00+ a gallon. No one likes to think that is coming, either, but it is.

[fly free]

Thank you Jazz, It's what I thought about the park jobs, but I was not 100% sure.

I am sure your right about the gas going up. It's almost $4 a gal here in Fl right now. It's such a shame what is happening to the US.

I will keep looking, maybe I can get a job on some sort of ranch if there are any out there, or maybe work in the travle biz.

Take care and Thanks again for taking the time to write

Brian

[nm_photojournalist]

Here are a few of my favorite Southwestern towns that might get you started on a search at least. They are more or less in your "ideal" range, and differing in size. I don't think any are over 20,000. All near mountains, national parks or national forests, and fishing, skiiing, horseback riding, etc. nearby.

Taos, NM
Las Vegas, NM
Ruidoso, NM
Silver City, NM

Durango, CO
Montrose, CO
Gunnison, CO
Pagosa Springs, CO

Payson, AZ
Cottonwood-Sedona area, AZ
Showlow, AZ
Flagstaff, AZ

[fly free]

Thank you nm_photojournalist

[fly free]

Hello again Jazz, in regards to your mesg below to another, can you tell me if this would also apply to me?

I can't comment specifically on the area you refer to near Durango. I will offer this up: if you are locating in an isolated, rural area anywhere in Colorado, it is absolutely possible that you will be a victim of property crime or vandalism. My family had a farm in rural Colorado for a number of years. For several of those years,we did not live on the farm property. We had continual problems with thefts of tools, equipment, and other items--all taken from secured buildings. This in a county that, at the time, was considered relatively "safe."

There are several reasons for this. First, in rural Colorado, law enforcement personnel must cover huge geographical areas. In one Colorado county I lived in, there were generally four sheriff's deputies on duty at any given time covering an area about three times the size of Rhode Island. In a lot of Colorado counties, there may be no law enforcement on duty outside of incorporated areas between 2 and 8 AM. Second, like it or not, the drug trade and drug use, especially meth, is alive and well in rural Colorado. People desperate to feed a habit are quite willing to steal to do it. Third, though I don't consider this an excuse, there are a lot of people in rural Colorado who can't make a decent living there. Some of them turn to crime to suppplement meager incomes. This is exacerbated by rural Colorado's increasignly "have/have not" social structure.

Once again, this is not something that the real estate people of chamber of commerce types are likely to tell you. I would be very careful about having a property in most rural areas of Colorado that I would leave unattended for any length of time. A lot of rural Colorado rural residents go many years without problems, but all it takes is to get "cleaned out" once to leave a real bitter taste. I know--it's happened to me.

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by fly free

Hello again Jazz, in regards to your mesg below to another, can you tell me if this would also apply to me?

I can't comment specifically on the area you refer to near Durango. I will offer this up: if you are locating in an isolated, rural area anywhere in Colorado, it is absolutely possible that you will be a victim of property crime or vandalism. My family had a farm in rural Colorado for a number of years. For several of those years,we did not live on the farm property. We had continual problems with thefts of tools, equipment, and other items--all taken from secured buildings. This in a county that, at the time, was considered relatively "safe."

There are several reasons for this. First, in rural Colorado, law enforcement personnel must cover huge geographical areas. In one Colorado county I lived in, there were generally four sheriff's deputies on duty at any given time covering an area about three times the size of Rhode Island. In a lot of Colorado counties, there may be no law enforcement on duty outside of incorporated areas between 2 and 8 AM. Second, like it or not, the drug trade and drug use, especially meth, is alive and well in rural Colorado. People desperate to feed a habit are quite willing to steal to do it. Third, though I don't consider this an excuse, there are a lot of people in rural Colorado who can't make a decent living there. Some of them turn to crime to suppplement meager incomes. This is exacerbated by rural Colorado's increasignly "have/have not" social structure.

Once again, this is not something that the real estate people of chamber of commerce types are likely to tell you. I would be very careful about having a property in most rural areas of Colorado that I would leave unattended for any length of time. A lot of rural Colorado rural residents go many years without problems, but all it takes is to get "cleaned out" once to leave a real bitter taste. I know--it's happened to me.

Depends on the locale. Some areas are worse than others--some places are pretty safe. As you can tell from my other posts, I'm not a big fan of resort areas. They tend to attract a fair number of "transient" workers. That often translates into more crime--especially property crime. The same can be said of the areas of Colorado and Wyoming now being impacted by gas drilling. Unfortunately, crime seems to increase in those areas, too, with the boom.

I have friends who work in law enforcement in both Colorado and Wyoming. It's just a fact that, in many jurisidictions, growth is outpacing law enforcement's ability to deal with problems. I had even had a Colorado State Trooper captain tell me a few years ago that the Colorado Highway Patrol only had a few more troopers on the force than they had 30 years before, and that traffic and vehicle miles driven by the public had more than doubled in that same period. He told me that he and his subordinate troopers were regularly having to ignore significant traffic violations that they themselves had witnessed because they constantly had to concentrate on more serious violations and accidents. From what I can see, things haven't changed much in that arena, either. I regularly drive from one end of Colorado to the other and I often never see a trooper in several hundred miles--this on major Interstate, US, and state highways.

An anecdotal story: the spouse of an acquaintance of mine was involved in a serious car accident a few years ago on a rural western Colorado state highway. 911 was notified by a passing motorist within 10 minutes of the accident. The closest county sheriff's deputy (not even from the county where the accident occurred) was 45 miles away and took nearly 35 minutes to reach the scene. The closest state trooper was nearly 100 miles away and did not reach the scene for about an hour and 15 minutes. This on a dry fall evening at about 8 PM. Meantime, the volunteer fire dept. and EMT's reached the scene from a town 15 miles away in less than 15 minutes. Luckily, everyone survived the accident, but my acquaintance told me that, had the EMT's and extrication taken the same time as law enforcement to get there, at least one of the accident victims probably would've died.

Interestingly, though Wyoming is much more sparsely populated than rural Colorado--with fewer counties (23 as opposed to 64) and much greater distances between towns--law enforcement coverage and response in rural areas seems much better there to me. And, yes, I've lived and traveled extensively in both places.