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It was kind of hard to believe. After all, just a few years ago, some candidate for statewide office wanted to illustrate what could happen if his economic development program was not adopted. He ran an ad with a photo of decay and dilapidation and asked if people really wanted Denver to turn into a ghost town like the one in the picture.
The picture had been taken in Salida. Last week, I saw
another published picture taken in Salida. It was in
Sunset Magazine, where Salida was no longer an avatar of
ghost-townhood, but instead among 24 places featured as
The West's Best Cities.
At least, I think it was Salida. I knew all the people
who were quoted, but the Sunset Salida was in the San
Juan Mountains three hours southwest of Denver.
You can't even see the San Juans from Salida, much less claim to be in them. The Sangre de Cristo range, longest in the Rockies, starts just south of town. The arid Arkansas Hills rise on the east. The Sawatch Range, highest in the Rockies, looms to the west.
But no San Juans. Over the years, I've concluded that our Sawatch Range lacks the charisma required of a modern Colorado range, and so writers try to eliminate it.
Thus when an Air Force bomber crashed in the northern
part of the Sawatch Range in Eagle County near New York
Peak, we heard about the New York Range.
Frequently
the Collegiate Peaks (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.) in
the middle of the Sawatch Range get extended so that the
entire 120-mile stretch is mistakenly called the Collegiate
Range.
And then there's the Sunset writer, John Villani, who continues to put Salida in the San Juans (he's written about us before), rather than along the Sawatch Range.
At least he didn't put us in the San Luis Valley, as many UFO writers do. The San Luis Valley offers enchantment, ethnicity and more cosmic vortices than any spot north of Sedona, Ariz.
But our depression to the north, the Upper Arkansas Valley, is a mundane and prosaic zone with nary a cosmic vortex in sight. One major economic activity involves making big rocks into little ones -- either at mines and quarries before the Reagan regime, or at prisons since then.
Even so, Salida has been discovered
quite often
in recent years -- Snow Country, Men's Journal and Vintage
Motorcycles come to mind -- and it makes various lists of
Great Outdoor Towns
or Wonderful Art Towns
and the like.
Since I'm not in the business of touting real-estate here, it would suit me fine if Salida were neglected, since the process is so destructive.
First the place gets discovered by a writer or two, who extol its down-home authentic nature, uncorrupted by industrial tourism and the ensuing hordes.
That leads to more publicity and more tourists, which attracts the attention of chains and franchises. The ma-and-pa cafes and motels get replaced by national brands. Whatever unaffected charm the place had is gone, but by then the writers have discovered a new place to trash by putting it on a list.
Of course, I'm a writer, too, and I like money as much
as the next guy. So I've been tempted to produce a list of
The Best Rural Towns to Live In,
based on these
criteria:
· Average nap time of a dog lying in the middle of Main Street.
· The probability that the bartender is the only person in the saloon with a steady job.
· No home mail delivery. People have to go to the post office every day to get their mail, which means they can keep up on local gossip and thus feel involved in the community.
· Size of the police department. Ideally, there isn't one, and the sheriff's office is at least 25 miles away, although there's a resident deputy known for his low-key and friendly ways.
· Relative condition of sidewalks and streets. Solid, well-maintained sidewalks and unpaved washboard streets rise to the top of the list.
· Number of resident eccentrics pointed out to
visitors -- people like the town drunk,
the
village idiot,
the guy with all the junk in his
yard
and the cat lady,
a widow in an old frame
house with at least 20 felines wandering in and out. Every
settlement has these, but in the towns that make the list,
everybody knows who they are.
Certainly there are many other factors -- a high average age of the town's pickups, an abundance of cranks and troublemakers, a wide variety of housing that ranges from teepees and trailers to an old mansion or two -- and this information would have to be gathered and collated.
That sounds like too much work, so the good towns are probably safe from me. And perhaps there's another safety factor. For all I know, Sunset might have been was trying to help Salida by putting it in the San Juans, thereby sending potential pilgrims to South Fork or Durango.
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