The ultimate Colorado mountain town? (Salida, Ouray: neighborhoods, to live, restaurant)

[COcheesehead]

Originally Posted by mkwensky

Does Leadville belong on this list? It feels more like a place where real people live and work and not like a touristy place.

It’s big with the adventure crowd. They run the Leadville 100 bike race and the Leadville Trail 100 running race which has taken on world wide fame. There are full length documentaries about both on YouTube.

The Mineral Belt loop is also there and is a spectacular bike path to ride through all the old mining infrastructure. Turquoise Lake is also a classic alpine lake just on the edge of town.

So I can see why some would be attracted to Leadville. It’s certainly different than Vail or Aspen.

[brk330]

Deadville! I lived there in '95, pretty depressed back then.
We had 5 people in a miner's shack in Furman's block across from the 'We Love Leadville!" sign.
Can't believe they are building a whole neighborhood on that lot.
A friend stayed and bought a $30,000 house - now worth 10x that.
There's some great restaurants there and good antiquing.

We went to Crested Butte after that, then up to Breckenridge, then Steamboat. Back when they had to try to lure the skiers to come downtown to "Old Town". Amazing how much it changed. We stayed in Steamboat for 10+ years until paying the top prices in the country for food, daycare, and healthcare got really old. I also was starting to need to see specialists that were 2-3 hour drives.

I would add Salida an Carbondale to your list.

I voted Crested Butte - although it is not known for friendliness.

[wilberry]

Basalt

[COcheesehead]

I always thought Crested Butte was friendly, but I was just there as a tourist. I heard from a single female who lived there that dating was tough. The men outnumber the women so she said “the odds were good, but the goods were odd.”

I voted for Crested Butte. I think it still retains its Colorado charm unlike say Breck and it’s accessible at all price points. Minutes outside of town is quintessential Colorado.

I could be swayed to vote Telluride. It’s one of the more spectacular towns in the US. Ouray, Silverton, Durango and Telluride pack a punch as a group for anyone close enough to access them. They IMHO are the best Colorado has to offer for traditional mountain towns. There are some other towns that aren’t mountain towns so not on the OPs list that are some quality places to visit or live, but we’ll leave that for another poll.

[pikabike]

Good thing South Park is not a town. I know the area that the fictional location was based on. It’s not a ski resort or other vacation mecca.

[Melanzana92]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

It IS a beautiful drive through Leadville. I've never stopped to check out the town, but perhaps I should.

Go a few blocks east or west of Harrison on pretty much any of the numbered streets; Leadville honestly has the best collection of houses of any small town in the state. Most of their foundations are literally firewood , but hey, they are cute, vintage, colorful, and I love them.

Originally Posted by brk330

Deadville! I lived there in '95, pretty depressed back then.
We had 5 people in a miner's shack in Furman's block across from the 'We Love Leadville!" sign.
Can't believe they are building a whole neighborhood on that lot.
A friend stayed and bought a $30,000 house - now worth 10x that.
There's some great restaurants there and good antiquing.

I can imagine it was quite different in 1995, or any time before 2010. I drive through Stringtown a lot so I don't notice small changes, but many say Stringtown has changed the most (a very good thing, imo, coming in from that direction used to be not the best first impression).

The Railyard is coming in 3 phases, and all the construction you'd see if you drive by right now is phase 1 and some underground infrastructure for phase 2. It's, relatively, pretty big. However, my mind was blown when I saw what Gunnison is getting. They just broke ground on a 1700-home development to the east of the university which looks like it's going to literally almost double the town's size! I think that's amazing. That town has room to expand and they're using it.

[mkwensky]

Originally Posted by Melanzana92

What kind of comment is this? "Real people" (whatever that means) live in all the towns on the list. You can't have a tourist town without the town i.e. people running the place, providing services, etc. Tourism is also a very important part of Lake County's economy in the present day. In my experience, Leadville seems to have a similar tourist presence as Buena Vista, which is pretty decently touristy.

I may be biased but I think Leadville does quite well for itself in all 7 criteria posted by the OP.

I understand that many, if not most, of the service providers often don't actually live in some of the more expensive resort towns, but somewhere nearby. Like many people who work in Vail actually reside in Avon, and some who work in Aspen live in Basalt.

[brk330]

Originally Posted by Melanzana92

... However, my mind was blown when I saw what Gunnison is getting. They just broke ground on a 1700-home development to the east of the university which looks like it's going to literally almost double the town's size! I think that's amazing. That town has room to expand and they're using it.

Yow! I used to live there too, great town.
Steamboat is where i lived the most and I'm kind of alarmed at the $23 million an anonymous donor gave the housing Authority to build affordable homes.

And then the same person donated $6 million more

[waltcolorado]

I dont live in Telluride but close enough to get KOTO radio (a good thing...) so was hearing about housing issues there this fall. Apparently its about forty percent short term rentals now which probably helped fuel the recent housing price increase. Homes going from longer term rental to short term rental are displacing workers there and you pretty much have to live in Montrose or maybe Dolores to work in Telluride. Business cant get people to work because of the long and sometimes dangerous in the winter commute. Some businesses have even gone under from lack of workers despite plenty of business opportunity. But.. folks who own the property like the short term rental for the $$ generated plus they get to occasionally use the property.

In the recent Nov 2 election, there was prop 300 which would have way reduced the short term rental licenses. Just going by memory but it nearly cut the number of short term rental licenses by about 1/2. This was countered by prop 2D which only raised the tax on short term rental. Advocates for 2D said it would generate something like $200K yearly for the city.. Guess how far that goes for affordable housing in Telluride. I think the $200K "carrot" was also way less than the money raised to fight 300.

2D won in the recent Nov election.

Lack of affordable housing is a big deal in all those towns.

And.. what a cool list of places on the planet!

[TCHP]

What I think a lot of people may not know is that at one time, Leadville was larger than Denver and has a longer history than nearly any other mountain town, except possibly Central City and Alma, and that's discounting some farming towns on the San Luis Valley that are older, but obviously not in the mountains. Unlike many others on this list, it was still working hard at mineral extraction for many decades after everyone else on this list was teetering on the verge of collapse and disappearing with only a few hundred people, or less, still living in them. As a result of its prominence, it had an additional half century of clean up it required to make it desirable, unlike nearly every other town on this list.

Gotta agree with some others that there is no ultimate CO mountain town because ultimate can be so varied. Many on the list are resort areas which can mean radically high cost and pretention, but they will also have a wide range of retail and recreation not found in other, less sophisticated places. Less desirable places will also have a broad range of activities, but of a much different caliber and without as much retail support.

I also agree that the simple fact we can debate all of these places in one state is really freaking cool in and of its self.