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I try. Or as my teachers told my Mom, Mikey is very trying.
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IBM, Kodak and Hewlett Packard probably came to northern front range because of the access to college graduates produced by the state tax supported universities and the supply of immigrants attracted to the mountains and probably lower land and labor costs than in other states that have or attract higher wage workers. If the locals helped finalize the deals, good for them. The coming of these people and jobs and the additional growth spun off from them created the drive for government spending to build schools, roads, jails, parks, etc. In some people's eyes government spending / taxes ruined these areas. To others they just reacted to the needs created by business growth and the benefits were worth the costs to most. Some discretionary spending, but mostly not. Some stayed and enjoyed those jobs, facilities and services, some left. It seems like a disconnect to praise the business recruitment successes of northern Colorado but not directly recognize that the business growth started and still drives the regional transformation. The government wouldn't have expanded without them creating the needs and providing the resources. CO state & local taxes are, according to the Tax Foundation, only about 1.5% of income higher than Texas and less than 2% of income higher than South Dakota. There are tradeoffs for being in a highly desired area with some good paying jobs and a bit higher public services level than other spots, but it is good to have that choice and others.
Montezuma County is classified as frontier on the study's map. So I guess Mancos and outskirts may be frontier. But barely. It is still within fairly reasonable reach of Durango and Cortez for work, shopping, etc. If it was an hour further away from these urban spots, it probably would hold fewer people. Like Dove Creek or less. The frontier usually has a needed tie to the urban, even if an independent attitude is prevalent. I have generally preferred to live on the outskirts, even in the edge frontier. I debate how much I need or want the city, but so far I have kept at least a modest sized one within a moderate reach. Folks with flexibility will try to find the right place for them.
If Colorado's degree of urbanity, overall or within a region are not to your liking (or particulars of its cities), there is still some choice provided by other states. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urba..._United_States
Wyoming, Montana are different enough to notice the difference. As are further away places.
Thankyou for your excellent post NW CROW.Mancos is still mostly ranching but many of us not from ranching families do make our living in Cortez,Durango,etc. We provide services hard to find even even in Cities because we depend on our reputations and word of mouth for work not angies list.We live here because we love it and our neighbors and go the extra mile to be the best. It makes all the difference. Never meant to offend anyone but fitting in a small town means you are the best at what you do or your not. My Hero Popeye the sailorman said it perfect on black and white TV in the fifties. I am what I am and I aint what I aint I'm Popeye the sailorman Toot Toot
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Thankyou for your excellent post NW CROW.Mancos is still mostly ranching but many of us not from ranching families do make our living in Cortez,Durango,etc. We provide services hard to find even even in Cities because we depend on our reputations and word of mouth for work not angies list.We live here because we love it and our neighbors and go the extra mile to be the best. It makes all the difference. Never meant to offend anyone but fitting in a small town means you are the best at what you do or your not. My Hero Popeye the sailorman said it perfect on black and white TV in the fifties. I am what I am and I aint what I aint I'm Popeye the sailorman Toot Toot
This is a very true and non-judgmental post. I agree with what you have said here 100%. You're only going to ruffle my feathers when, like in your previous post, you lay more claim to Colorado than anyone else who lives here.
My family first came here in the 1800s. I don't own this state any more than the guy who moved here yesterday.
The fact that you live somewhere (I've been to Mancos) that nobody else wants to live doesn't make you better than anyone else. It just means you live somewhere nobody else wants to live. I can't imagine needing to belittle others because they live somewhere I don't.
Colorado is a big state. I don't think you get a stranglehold on the definition of the "true Colorado".
If you really need to feel special though...... You're a unique and beautiful flower. There are none like you. You're stronger, smarter, and better than them all. Will you sleep better tonight?
You've been to Mancos, eh? And you don't want to live there, so nobody must want to live there. Whatever. Guess you didn't stop at the P and D to have one of their great lunches and chat with a local or two. You must have completely ignored the Millwood, a fairly upscale restaurant that has a tradition of bringing in musical artists who are well known on a national level a couple of times a year. Bet you kept on 160 and didn't take the turn to see Mancos proper which has a cute little art district and a wonderful brand new library. There are Mancos citizens groups of all kinds who are deeply committed to keeping Mancos a special place and making it even better in addition. I consider Mancos to be far superior to Durango which has turned itself into just one more glitzy, over-priced resort town, filled with people who mostly earned their money somewhere else. I haved LIVED in Durango; I have LIVED in Mancos; I have LIVED in Dolores and I have LIVED in Cortez. I now LIVE on a farm 10 miles south of Cortez. I have posted here in detail about life in the Four Corners, and it's true we lack a Washington Park. We just have to make do with Mesa Verde and Canyons of the Ancients and all the rest. Working people in this part of Colorado (absent La Plata County and Durango) generally do need a different set of job skills than the people on the urban Front Range. If you want to call Montezuma County and Mancos and Cortez and all the rest around here the "Frontier," be my guest - ESPECIALLY if it discourages the crowds on the teaming Front Range from coming out here. I really can't imagine most urban Coloradans making it out here for longer than 6 months, anyway. Yep, we have a lot fewer jobs - especially conventional ones. Many people do all sorts of different things to get by. One of my favorite people out here is the foreman of the hay ranch I live on. That man does whatever needs to be done, and he works from dawn to well past sunset. He knows this part of the world better than anyone I've ever met, and like me, he loves this land passionately. Every conversation I have with him, I learn something new and I am awed all over again by his cheerful confidence even in the most difficult times. Oh, thank god, I get to talk to Ritchie and not some crazy with an IT job for Focus on the Family.
This thread really goes to the heart of why I generally feel so alienated from all the stuff "on top" of the Colorado Forum here. Ya'll fight for housing that you can't afford, sit forever on the parking lots people on the Front Range laughingly refer to as "Interstates," and agonize if Denver or the Springs will match the standard of life you were used to back in NOVA. I'm sure that folks like me and Parfletch would indeed be considered "hostile" by many now living in their cookie cutter housing tracts on the plains east of Denver. I'll take my splendid mesas, the air which always smells like sage rather than exhaust fumes, the Sleeping Ute, the San Juans and the La Platas and the bright rainbow arches of the irrigation pivots providing water to the lush meadows of deep green hayfields all around me. I go howl at the coyotes just for the heck of it, lie on top of my car on summer evenings so I can watch a night sky filled with stars and meteors the like of which no Denver resident will ever, ever see. I'm more broke than a church mouse, but I grow a vast garden and put up food for every winter. This year all our fruit trees went insane, and I have been picking apples and pears non-stop all October - organic ones at that - which taste like nothing you'll buy in King Soopers. Money? It's a necessary evil, but I don't need so much of it that I have to go back and live in a heavily urbanized area the equivalent of any other urban region in the country. I know that it is sometimes frowned upon to critique the Front Range, but I find it hard to believe that folks will stop thronging to Denver because I inform them that the air doesn't smell like sage.
I consider myself eccentric as hell - far from "special". If anything, I'm a unique and prickly cactus that's native to Colorado and sometimes I'll bloom with lovely red flowers, but 99% of the time, you'll be the happier if you never encounter me on some hike out here. Sometimes I sleep well and sometimes I don't, but don't worry, your opinion of me has no impact on whether or not I decide to stay up all night and read Wallace Stegnar or Edward Abbey. I'm sure you are a nice bright dandelion growing in the yard of an upscale house in a gated community. May you live long and prosper and may you and your offspring become the source of some delicious dandelion wine served at one of Denver's many fine five star restaurants.
You've been to Mancos, eh? And you don't want to live there, so nobody must want to live there. Whatever. Guess you didn't stop at the P and D to have one of their great lunches and chat with a local or two. You must have completely ignored the Millwood, a fairly upscale restaurant that has a tradition of bringing in musical artists who are well known on a national level a couple of times a year. Bet you kept on 160 and didn't take the turn to see Mancos proper which has a cute little art district and a wonderful brand new library. There are Mancos citizens groups of all kinds who are deeply committed to keeping Mancos a special place and making it even better in addition. I consider Mancos to be far superior to Durango which has turned itself into just one more glitzy, over-priced resort town, filled with people who mostly earned their money somewhere else. I haved LIVED in Durango; I have LIVED in Mancos; I have LIVED in Dolores and I have LIVED in Cortez. I now LIVE on a farm 10 miles south of Cortez. I have posted here in detail about life in the Four Corners, and it's true we lack a Washington Park. We just have to make do with Mesa Verde and Canyons of the Ancients and all the rest. Working people in this part of Colorado (absent La Plata County and Durango) generally do need a different set of job skills than the people on the urban Front Range. If you want to call Montezuma County and Mancos and Cortez and all the rest around here the "Frontier," be my guest - ESPECIALLY if it discourages the crowds on the teaming Front Range from coming out here. I really can't imagine most urban Coloradans making it out here for longer than 6 months, anyway. Yep, we have a lot fewer jobs - especially conventional ones. Many people do all sorts of different things to get by. One of my favorite people out here is the foreman of the hay ranch I live on. That man does whatever needs to be done, and he works from dawn to well past sunset. He knows this part of the world better than anyone I've ever met, and like me, he loves this land passionately. Every conversation I have with him, I learn something new and I am awed all over again by his cheerful confidence even in the most difficult times. Oh, thank god, I get to talk to Ritchie and not some crazy with an IT job for Focus on the Family.
This thread really goes to the heart of why I generally feel so alienated from all the stuff "on top" of the Colorado Forum here. Ya'll fight for housing that you can't afford, sit forever on the parking lots people on the Front Range laughingly refer to as "Interstates," and agonize if Denver or the Springs will match the standard of life you were used to back in NOVA. I'm sure that folks like me and Parfletch would indeed be considered "hostile" by many now living in their cookie cutter housing tracts on the plains east of Denver. I'll take my splendid mesas, the air which always smells like sage rather than exhaust fumes, the Sleeping Ute, the San Juans and the La Platas and the bright rainbow arches of the irrigation pivots providing water to the lush meadows of deep green hayfields all around me. I go howl at the coyotes just for the heck of it, lie on top of my car on summer evenings so I can watch a night sky filled with stars and meteors the like of which no Denver resident will ever, ever see. I'm more broke than a church mouse, but I grow a vast garden and put up food for every winter. This year all our fruit trees went insane, and I have been picking apples and pears non-stop all October - organic ones at that - which taste like nothing you'll buy in King Soopers. Money? It's a necessary evil, but I don't need so much of it that I have to go back and live in a heavily urbanized area the equivalent of any other urban region in the country. I know that it is sometimes frowned upon to critique the Front Range, but I find it hard to believe that folks will stop thronging to Denver because I inform them that the air doesn't smell like sage.
I consider myself eccentric as hell - far from "special". If anything, I'm a unique and prickly cactus that's native to Colorado and sometimes I'll bloom with lovely red flowers, but 99% of the time, you'll be the happier if you never encounter me on some hike out here. Sometimes I sleep well and sometimes I don't, but don't worry, your opinion of me has no impact on whether or not I decide to stay up all night and read Wallace Stegnar or Edward Abbey. I'm sure you are a nice bright dandelion growing in the yard of an upscale house in a gated community. May you live long and prosper and may you and your offspring become the source of some delicious dandelion wine served at one of Denver's many fine five star restaurants.
Namaste,
Rambler
I don't hate Mancos, I just said that nobody (meaning few) choose to live there. That's an indisputable fact. It's good too. We should have places like that. Wild should stay wild and cities should stay cities. I am constantly promoting dense urban growth versus suburban sprawl on this forum because I believe that's the best way forward.
I love and value eccentrics. Our world would be a much more boring place without you.
Read my post again. I was responding to someone who was putting down where I live and claiming that theirs was the only true Colorado. It's bull squat.
You don't know me, but if you need to paint some picture of me in your mind to fit a certain narrative, go for it. I don't live in a cookie cutter subdivision or a gated community. Don't much care to ever do that either. If that's what someone wants, I say be happy. I may litter the highway and pull the survey stakes out while they are planning the subdivision if it's being built in a field I played in while growing up. If my dog, Hayduke, poops in their yard, I might leave it, what can you do? Like Doc and Abbzug I have kids now. They're the best thing in the world. I load them up in my little camper every chance I get and bring them to the places I grew up exploring and some I'm exploring for the first time now in the hopes that I can impart a little eccentricity in them too.
No need to generate hostility. It's not there from my end
Last edited by SkyDog77; 11-12-2015 at 08:42 AM..
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