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Over in Montrose County, they've got a minor battle
going over the Code of the West.
So I am advised by
Ellen Miller, the Post's Western Slope correspondent who is
also a columnist in some rural papers.
Like many montane jurisdictions, Montrose County faces an invasion by People of Money who want to build big houses out in the backwoods where they will not be troubled by traffic noise, tattooed teenagers, socio-economic inferiors and similar annoyances of urban life.
However, they also want urban services: paved roads, mail and newspaper delivery, reliable electricity, potable water, quick-response law enforcement, overnight express and similar amenities.
Since the invading People of Money can afford attorneys and campaign contributions, they usually get their way. The county raises taxes to provide the services they demand.
The locals, who were just getting by as it was, are soon priced out -- even though they may have once believed that they were electing a county government to represent their interests, rather than the interests of real-estate speculators, highway contractors and migrant gentry.
Several solutions have been proposed -- blight preservation ordinances, subsidized affordable housing, replacing prairie dogs with realty agents at the annual Nucla hunt.
A Montrose County group, apparently borrowing the
concept from Larimer County, proposed the Code of the
West.
I saw it in the monthly Valley Chronicle ($15 a
year, P.O. Box 1412, Paonia CO 81428).
The preface advises that The men and women who came
to this part of the country during the westward expansion
of the United States were bound by an unwritten code of
conduct. The values of integrity and self-reliance guided
their decisions, actions and interactions. In keeping with
that spirit, we offer this information to help those who
wish to follow in the footsteps of these hardy individuals
by living in rural Montrose County.
The Code then provides several pages of useful advice. Among the admonishments:
Gravel roads generate dust... Check carefully with
the county road foreman when any statement is made by
anyone that indicates a gravel road will be paved!
From time to time, the only phone service available
has been a party line.... Even cellular phones will not
work in all areas.
Power outages can occur in outlying areas with more
frequency than in more developed areas. A loss of electric
power can also interrupt your supply of water from a
well.
Many property owners do not own the mineral rights
under their property. Owners of mineral rights have the
ability to change the surface characteristics in order to
extract their minerals.
Trees are a wonderful environmental amenity, but can
also involve your home in a forest fire.
Neighbors may allow hunting activities which could
influence how you view safety to yourself or pets.
Even though you pay property taxes to the county, the
amount of tax collected does not cover the cost of the
services provided to rural residents. In general, other
revenue sources subsidize the lifestyle of those who live
in the country.
These caveats seem about as obvious as Pike's Peak and
should be no more controversial than the law of gravity,
but the sensitive Montrose County real-estate industry got
traumatized. Ellen reports that the Code is being
reworked so as not to offend anybody. And so it won't
perpetrate the horror of horrors, which is putting a damper
on property transactions... So Montrose County officials
are buckling under and going along with what the
real-estate types want.
At first I, too, was upset. Here we've got tradition, expressed in the Code of the West, and it's being trampled by the New People.
But after some meditation, I realize that it's the New People who are actually following tradition.
Is there a resident population which could interfere with full enjoyment of your property? The self-reliant pioneers called in the U.S. cavalry to tend the problem; their modern descendants usually enact zoning ordinances. However, the effect is the same.
Promoters used to advertise developments that included
impossibilities like steamboats on the Pecos River or
diamonds and emeralds strewn across Utah, and thousands of
homesteaders moved into deserts because Rain follows the
plow.
Nowadays, the promoters might embroider a little about utility service or road-plowing, but they're the ones who truly follow in the esteemed ways of D.C. Oakes, Brick Pomeroy and the hundreds of others who profitably touted the West in the 19th century.
The Montrose County folks who proposed a truthful Code
of the West may have meant well and all that, but our true
heritage is not integrity and self-reliance,
but
government subsidy, salted mines and blue-sky
promotion.
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