Are CO people mean or what? (Denver, Boulder: wedding, to live, moving)

[Teckeeee]

Coming from So Cal people are nice here. Mean is what some people consider NYC residents, but Colorado c'mon.

[jwiley]

Originally Posted by Colorado Rambler

HEY! You forgot Cortez! That's OK. EVERYONE forgets about us out here. We'd be friendly, too.. if someone would just give us a chance. *sniff*

We even have a bowling alley here and TWO restaurants that serve chicken fried steak!

*goes out and mopes in the pinto beans*

Being originally from Hudson I can tell you Cortez is damn near a metropolis compared to many of the other towns on the list.

[jwiley]

Reading this thread it makes me laugh. People act like Colorado natives are the only ones proud of where they are from. Have any of you spoken with someone from California, pretty much anywhere on the east coast, Texas, Montana, Washington state, Oregon, or the south? They are all proud of being from where they are from. Even Wyomingites are proud of where they are from, and hate outsiders going as far as calling everybody from Colorado a greeny.

I will say that my mother had the Colorado native sticker on her pickup for years, she put it on there when she moved to Utah, when she was transferred by her company to Montana and then Texas she was sure to replace it every time she traded in her vehicles. The reason is people from Utah dislike Coloradans less than they do Californians or east coasters. hell Montana natives make no secret of the fact they do not like outsiders but people from the Rocky mountain states are tolerable. And for whatever reason Texans actually like us Colorado natives, must have something to do with our basic economy and culture having been similar for many years.

I would also like to venture a guess that many of the people complaining about Colorado natives will not hesitate to tell you how great their hometowns were when they were kids, the difference is that Colorado natives not only remember how great their childhoods were, but those of us on this board are old enough to see the bad in those areas as well, and the changes both good and bad that the growing population has brought.

To get this thread back on track, I would have to agree with the original poster on this thread, I have been told many times that I come off as stand offish, intimidating, or aloof. Only to be told later once someone gets to know me how mistaken they were and how nice I really am. I know being raised around farmers and blue collar workers in my youth that those are the types of guys I grew up around, but other than that I have no idea where it comes from.

[otterprods]

Originally Posted by Colorado Rambler

HEY! You forgot Cortez!

I think it's in one of the later verses. The song is 'Little Town Tour' by Chuck Pyle off 'Higher Ground - Songs of Colorado'.
Chuck Pyle | Music
He lives in Palmer Lake and is one of very few Colorado artists making enduring tunes specifically inspired by Colorado and the inter-mountain West. And no I don;t get a cut... I'm just a fan.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by jwiley

Reading this thread it makes me laugh. People act like Colorado natives are the only ones proud of where they are from. Have any of you spoken with someone from California, pretty much anywhere on the east coast, Texas, Montana, Washington state, Oregon, or the south? They are all proud of being from where they are from. ...
I will say that my mother had the Colorado native sticker on her pickup for years, she put it on there when she moved to Utah, when she was transferred by her company to Montana and then Texas she was sure to replace it every time she traded in her vehicles. The reason is people from Utah dislike Coloradans less than they do Californians or east coasters. hell Montana natives make no secret of the fact they do not like outsiders but people from the Rocky mountain states are tolerable. And for whatever reason Texans actually like us Colorado natives, must have something to do with our basic economy and culture having been similar for many years.

I would also like to venture a guess that many of the people complaining about Colorado natives will not hesitate to tell you how great their hometowns were when they were kids, the difference is that Colorado natives not only remember how great their childhoods were, but those of us on this board are old enough to see the bad in those areas as well, and the changes both good and bad that the growing population has brought.

...

I agree with a lot of what you have said.

On the one hand, Coloradans are generally pretty friendly. But this constant bragging about being a Colorado native...who cares. Millions of people in this nation have lived in their home state their entire lives. I'm originally from western NYS, and we New York Staters are proud of our state and proud of our history. The I lived most of my adult life in Virginia -- a colonial bastion where a great deal of our American history was formulated...Virginians are proud of their state, also. Colorado has some great things going for it...and so do other states. Generally speaking, I don't find the people from one state any better than the people from any other state...just different. In the end, the coincidence of what state you were born in doesn't make you any better or worse. What matters is what kind of individual you are.

[Idunn]

If anyone would have the right to use a "Native" bumper sticker, it would be the Anasazi.

More lately that would include Native Americans (and pre-Coloradoans) the Ute, Navajo, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Kiowa, Comanche and Crow, etc.

Years ago I recall seeing these bumper stickers frequently, and it seemed the thing to do. More lately, not so much, or perhaps I haven't been paying attention. But this may have been driven in large part due a certain wistfulness as well feeling they were watching their home and heritage being literally swept out from under them.

Colorado's European population exploded with the discovery of gold in 1859. Before that this territory had been nominally under control of the Spanish and then Mexican governments, neither of which had expanded north much beyond a few settlements along the Rio Grande River in what is now New Mexico. Far southern Colorado (to be) ever but seeing the far outlier of this. Most influence came from the periphery. Those within were largely independents, such as fur trappers, and few in number (and half native in time). Formal incursions were few and far between. The military expeditions of Zebulon Pike were here and gone. There is still a large placard just north of Salida noting his 1806 Christmas spent there. Nor did the Spanish fail to notice, and then 'rendering' him to first Santa Fe and then the capitol of Chihuahua.

But in essence, before 1859 this was the land of Native Americans, with Europeans finding it more expedient and profitable to be elsewhere. Then that all changed, and by 1860 Colorado's population (minus the natives, who did not count) was something like 34,000. By 1880 it was well established at 194,000. And the western frontier, especially for natives, was quickly closing. Yet it took until 1930 for the state's population to break one million, and until 1970 for that number to double.

For native Coloradoans, however one wishes to understand that term, there was a certain stability during this period. The state continued to grow, but seemingly just enough so that a certain prosperity could be had. And, by and large, the tourists that appeared regularly every summer could be relied upon to depart come autumn.

But then that began to change, and rapidly so. Not only did some of the tourists not return home, but decided Colorado would make a fine new one. They brought new and at times troubling norms with them, different expectations and ways of doing things. AND, in time their ever greater numbers began to mean something. In some respects demographics is fate. By 1990 a near doubling of the 1960 population. In just a decade, between 1990 and 2000, one million more. With only a slightly less rapid increase in the next decade to over five million by 2010. As well the prediction that well before mid-century that this number would double again to some 10,000,000.

One might well feel overwhelmed. For anyone living along the Front Range these past decades they have seen a rapid, relentless and seemingly unstoppable change to most all they knew. And by and large extinction of a former way of life. Field after field, farm after ranch have been subsumed into an ever growing suburbia and greater population. With numbers of foreigners (meaning from elsewhere) now well into the majority, and politically making the rules.

Nor rural Colorado immune from this either. On the one hand, the incursion of more and more second homes and influx of strangers with entirely different mindsets and priorities. With locally or on a state level little say in Denver. Water appropriated, the common use of firearms abbreviated, and perhaps most of all just overrun.

Something any Indian would understand. For these Native Americans suffered much the same and worse more than a century ago.

[otterprods]

Originally Posted by Idunn

If anyone would have the right to use a "Native" bumper sticker, it would be the Anasazi.

Methinks you need to do some quick research on the term 'Anasazi' and who they really were.

Beyond that, I don't disagree with your points about how the Ancient Pueblo people were the only real "natives" to Colorado. Except I would take it a step further and say it's just the rocks that have been here since the start. Of course, even those got pushed around all over the place if you look back far enough in geological time.

[CosmicWizard]

^^^^We could take it even further and say that the original sub atomic energy particles, if still locked into the rocks as far back as the BIG BANG, are probably the oldest and most original Colorado natives. Those people who currently proclaim themselves as Colorado Natives are really just Johnny-come-latelies in the grand scheme of things, practitioners of short sightedness, with a shallow comprehension of the big picture.

[otterprods]

Originally Posted by CosmicWizard

the original sub atomic energy particles, if still locked into the rocks as far back as the BIG BANG, are probably the oldest and most original Colorado natives.

LOL! True, but the rocks that those sub-atomic particles may be locked up inside of were no doubt pushed here by seismic forces from wherever Pangea or some other landmass originally was, so they're intruders too! You know where this is taking us, right...? A potential debate that would probably get this whole thread shut down! So lets just say that the Rocks, the Pueblans, The Jazzlovers, and the newcomers from LA or DC or werever are all our friends so that we can all just get along!!!

[CosmicWizard]

otterprods wrote: So lets just say that the Rocks, the Pueblans, The Jazzlovers, and the newcomers from LA or DC or werever are all our friends so that we can all just get along!!!

Yeah baby!