Good morning, all!
This is that weird shoulder season in Colorado, when I find myself thinking about places I’d like to go and spots I’d like to stop for a minute when I’m on my way to somewhere else. In the last few years, I’ve found myself lingering just off the beaten path in southern Colorado. I love the coffee and public art in Pueblo and don’t mind if I do pick up a few bags of potatoes from a parking lot vendor in Walsenburg. I almost always stop at the Cuerno Verde Rest Area near Colorado City because how else am I going to learn about fierce battles between the Comanche and the Spanish that roiled the region south of Pueblo for a few days in 1779 while also taking in a glorious view?
Try as I may, it’s probably been a decade since I last convinced myself that I needed to exit in Trinidad. It looks beautiful from afar, but I’m honestly so overwhelmed by the tangle of Interstate 25 through there that I just press on. It’s a problem for me and a bigger one still for a city trying to evolve into a place people want to be. As Jason Blevins and Gabrielle Porter explore in their cover story this week, Trinidad seems to have great things in its future, but some there might be holding too tight to the way things were always done before.
Senior Editor
The Cover Story
Trinidad wrestles with sputtering pace of economic ch-ch-changes
Trinidad keeps trying. The mining city turned sex-change capital turned cannabis boomtown has endured several decades of highs and lows. A recent flood of investment — at least $150 million from public and private champions — hopes to end the boom-bust cycle with artist compounds, renovated historic buildings and a new state park aimed at sparking a new-school tourism and outdoor recreation economy.
The city a few miles north of the border of New Mexico in the state’s largest county is trumpeted as a model for how rural communities can transition toward sustainable economies, with new residents and visitors filling a vibrant historic downtown. It’s also emerging as a model for just how challenging change can be in rural Colorado.
Despite the unprecedented flow of public and private investment — and tens of millions in weed tax revenue — the so-called City of Champions is still struggling. New residents are not arriving fast enough and they aren’t sticking around. Jobs are hard to find. Big tourist draws are closing. Businesses are leaving.
“It feels like after all this attention and investment down here, it should be dramatically different but unfortunately the city is thwarting a lot of the progress,” said Kayvan Khalatbari, who estimates he’s spent around $4 million in the past few years to buy and renovate a building for his Sexy Pizza shop and a new brewery, both of which are now closed. “New Trinidad has not grown enough to support new businesses and old Trinidad is refusing to support the new businesses because of philosophical differences about change.”
Change is not coming quickly in Trinidad. The anticipated, but still painful, collapse of the city’s cannabis economy following legalization of weed a few miles down the road in New Mexico has highlighted the plodding pace of the city’s high-dollar transformation.
But brick by brick, the Trinidad revolution is taking shape. The next chapter for the historic city is unfolding, with outdoor recreation, art and tourism taking leading roles. Will the new tale of Trinidad be told in time for the city to become Colorado’s model for new-school economic transitions? Or could Trinidad become another type of model, revealing how fundamental changes in rural Colorado never come swiftly enough?
READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE
Jason Blevins | Outdoors/Business Reporter
The Colorado Lens
One of the joys of feature-image hunting is freezing random moments in time for viewers to savor. To pause and ponder. To appreciate. Or even to analyze, perhaps leading to deeper understanding of the issues that confront us daily. We hope you enjoy these recent freeze-frames capturing Colorado’s kaleidoscopic beauty.
Hugh Carey | Photographer
Flavor of the Week
Fun at a frozen palace in Cripple Creek
Maybe five minutes passed before my 7-year-old son broke a cardinal rule at Cripple Creek’s Ice Castles: No licking the walls.
I could have kept a closer watch, it’s true. But I was a bit dazzled as we stepped through the gates of this striking tourist attraction in the mountains west of Colorado Springs — a frozen palace hewn from several tons of icicles pieced together by 20-30 “ice artisans” and hand-shaped into glassy walls, arched corridors and towering spires. Mercifully my son’s tongue came off the wall without sticking, and he skittered off with a friend to uncover the secrets of the castle, built entirely from ice, including sculptures, a fountain, a throne, slides for all ages and a tunnel that snakes through the chilly dark of a castle wall.
It’s not just kid stuff. Bundled-up visitors who withstand the cold into the evening are treated to a memorable light show — not only from Cripple Creek’s brilliant sunsets, but from LED lights embedded in the ice that make the castle glow in changing hues of blue, green and purple, like a psychedelic version of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.
The ice castle is one of four across the country operated by a Utah-based company. After prior stints in Silverthorne and Dillon, the company took a two-year break in Colorado as it searched for a new home. It chose the scenic mining town partly because town leaders were eager partners, assisting with advertising and helping find a site, the company said. The castle stands just behind the town’s main street, with plenty of parking and views of the picturesque downtown and the sweeping vistas beyond.
“It’s a nice drive up there, and just a beautiful position to have an Ice Castle,” said Jared Henningsen, the company’s vice president of operations, calling the attraction a natural fit with the Cripple Creek Ice Festival, held Feb. 17-25, featuring ice sculptures and a live carving contest.
It’s expected to remain open at 339 Irene Ave. until early March. It’s not clear yet whether it will be back next winter.
When the weather grows too warm, the company plans to use heavy equipment to break the castle into pieces, to aid in melting. The process takes weeks — long enough that meltwater seeps back into the ground, averting trouble from runoff, the company says. (An ice castle in New Hampshire was once left intact and survived at a slow drip until June or July.)
Tickets are available in advance online, at $25 for general admission and $22 for children ages 4-11.
Lance Benzel | Team Editor
SunLit: Sneak Peek
In “True West,” a glimpse of the myth and brutal nuance of wolf reintroduction
EXCERPT: The complexity of wolf reintroduction is to some degree powered by the myths surrounding the apex predator. In “True West,” author Betsy Gaines Quammen goes deep into the sometimes gut-wrenching decisions that confront even ranchers who respect and welcome the animals. It’s an excerpt that captures her book’s much broader theme of the regional myths that feed into the polarization that has become ingrained in the American West.
THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Struggling through the pandemic with her book project, Quammen embraced the opportunity to get out of the house and engage with people from widely diverse backgrounds. And the exercise also helped her hone her conversation skills as she explored the many myths that drive the attitudes that have stoked division in the country. Here’s a slice of her Q&A:
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Quammen: Writing a book is hard. It just is. It requires discipline and focus, which I found myself lacking during 2020-2021. That said, this book became an engaging project during those turbulent years. I learned about the art of conversation and how our present region and country are defined by western myth.
Layered throughout the West are mythic influences so powerful that they helped drive one of the characters I write about from the Bundy battles over western public lands, Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oathkeepers, to the January 6 insurrection.
READ THE INTERVIEW WITH BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN
Kevin Simpson | Writer
Sunday Reading List
A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.
🌞 This week in U.S. House race news, Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout dropped her Democratic primary bid for the 3rd Congressional District, clearing the way for Adam Frisch to focus his campaign on GOP challengers, Jesse Paul explains. Sandra Fish looked at federal campaign finance reports and learned U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who left the 3rd to run for the safer 4th Congressional District seat, is a campaign finance juggernaut, outraising every candidate running for House seats from Colorado except for Frisch, who is among the top U.S. House fundraisers in the country.
🌞 Colorado lawmakers last March approved an additional $8 million to help people avoid being evicted from their homes. Brian Eason found out the money wasn’t spent because state officials told people not to apply, despite a record 53,000 eviction filings in 2023.
🌞 Bills with a high level of public interest are starting to surface in the statehouse, including one that would make it much easier for people to build an accessory dwelling unit in neighborhoods zoned for single-family residences, one that would ease access to aid-in-dying medications for people who live in Colorado or come here for help, and an overhaul of the way properties used primarily as short-term rentals are taxed. Lawmakers will also consider a bill to send $25 million to the state child welfare system to increase placement options for kids who languish in jail for weeks after they are cleared for release.
🌞 A few years back, oil and gas regulators were directed to prioritize people and the environment when considering new drilling plans. The Energy and Carbon Management Commission has been doing just that lately, rejecting one proposal because of its proximity to hundreds of people living in Broomfield and Erie and another because related truck traffic was risky to pronghorn in remote Weld County. But, as Mark Jaffe reports, it’s not like they’re saying no to everything.
🌞 Good news! Traffic deaths are down in Colorado. But as Olivia Prentzel reports, there’s a big caveat attached: More pedestrians than ever are dying in crashes.
🌞 In a fine example of looking before you leap, Grand Junction has opened a temporary hub for providing services to unhoused people while it plans a permanent facility. Nancy Lofholm checked out the Resource Center that for the next two years will operate from the type of pavilion tent typically used for festivals and parties.
Section by Dana Coffield | Senior Editor
Thanks for spending time with us on this lovely Colorado Sunday. We’re grateful for your attention. If you like what you’ve read here today, feel free to introduce us to a new friend by forwarding this newsletter or sending along a link to a story.
— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun
Corrections & Clarifications
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