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Some Denverites may not be all that alarmed by the ghastly specter presented on a flier put out by the AFL-CIO. Support the new airport, the unions warn, or Denver will turn into a ghost town, like the town in the picture -- Salida.
Naturally that upset the local chamber of commerce, which is complaining mightily that Salida really isn't a ghost town. But what's wrong with that? It means our handsome Victorian buildings are still in place. It means no rush hour, no brown cloud, no need for expensive public works projects to accommodate growth that, even if it happens, won't benefit anyone here now.
In ways, though, the comparison is apt. Like Denver, Salida started as a trade and transportation hub; for 75 years, it was a major division point on the D&RGW, and everything that was going anywhere in the Rockies went through Salida.
Better highways put Salida out of business; transportation shifted to trucks, which don't need roundhouse crews. A new airport represents a continuation of Denver's traditional role as the center of commerce for the mountain West; if Denver doesn't build a new airport, it means the city must find a new role.
That's not easy. Our chamber keeps promoting tourism and light industry to replace the railroad and the mines, but I'd wager that the only growing primary sector of the local economy is unrelated to any of the chamber's promotional activities. That economic growth comes from people like me, the self-employed at ma-and-pa cottage industries: writers, computer programmers, cabinetmakers, sculptors, artists, tiers of fishing flies, weavers, etc.
The very things that make Salida a ghost town
in
some respects also make Salida attractive for our
enterprises, which are small and personal, but not
isolated.
However, there isn't any money here, so there are no local markets for us. We have to do business all over the state, at least, and most of us do business on a national or international scale. It means we have to stay in touch.
If we can't do that from here, we'll have to move. If we move to Denver, we won't really benefit Denver's economy any more than we do now; just about everything we make or buy, from groceries to Federal Express packets, already passes through Denver, where somebody profits thereby. Further, Denver offers things that are not available in rural areas -- research libraries, specialists in everything from copyright law to export marketing, four-story bookstores, an international airport, etc. The more active we are in the boondocks, the more we spend on those trips to Denver to do things that can't be done at home.
If we actually moved to the city, though, we might be a net drain on Denver's economy, when you consider that we'd just add to the extant pollution and congestion problems without contributing much more to Denver's economy than we already do.
Thriving enterprises in the hinterlands thus represent a good deal for Denver, since that's what Denver has always done best -- serve as the commercial hub for about 500,000 square miles of hinterland. The more outstate commerce, the more Denver prospers.
Doing business in the hinterlands requires staying in touch with the rest of the world, which means better telephone service than what we have now. That's why the US West proposal to improve rural telephone exchanges represents a good investment in Colorado's future, no matter where you live.
On the surface, you're looking at $45 million, most of it from metropolitan pockets, and here's US West proposing to put that money in rural areas. You're right. That isn't fair. But it makes sense, because if Salida and Trinidad and Sterling and Rifle and the scores of other small towns in the Mountain West turn into real ghost towns, Denver won't be far behind, new airport or not.
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