Good Colorado Sunday morning, all!
I can hardly remember the last time I drove through the town of San Luis. I do know that it was early fall, the most beautiful season in Colorado. The sky was blue and the grasses were turning to gold. I marveled at the fact that this little bend in Colorado 159 (aka the road to Taos) had more than one pot shop and wondered what it might be like to live along Culebra Creek as it meanders south of town. I know I didn’t notice Culebra Peak to the east or pay much attention to the broad meadows that link the oldest town in state history to the chain of the Sangre de Cristos, known as La Sierra, that contains it.
Since then, it seems like I see Culebra everywhere. It shows up in news stories about people trying to bag all 58 fourteeners, or working to preserve the People’s Ditch that winds through La Vega, a common grazing area used and managed collectively since 1863. It is the star of tales of the valley rendered in wool on canvas and of this week’s cover story by Jennifer Brown, which examines a fight to preserve the culture of the San Luis Valley that has raged for generations.
Senior Editor
The Cover Story
The fence that turned neighbors to enemies
I came back from the San Luis Valley with sand in my shoes and a much deeper understanding of Colorado history.
Even though my cousins grew up in the valley, and I knew how important water was to the livelihood of their ranch and all the others in the region, I didn’t truly make the connection with the very origins of this state.
The vibe of the valley — the adobe buildings, the grotto dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the homemade biscochitos, fragrant with anise and cinnamon, that were generously shared with me over coffee — is far more meaningful to me after reporting this week’s cover story.
The story goes back to before Colorado was a state, back to when it was settled by farmers and ranchers from Mexico and Spain. These early settlers, most of whom spoke Spanish and many who were members of Indigenous tribes, were given strips of land called varas, named for an old Spanish unit of measurement. Each vara strip had access to an acequia, an irrigation ditch, which the settlers used to farm and raise cattle and sheep.
The water that runs through these ditches comes from “the mountain,” or what locals call “La Sierra,” which is actually many mountains and foothills covered in piñon pine that rise out of the valley. The document that deeded the land to the settlers, the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant of 1844, also gave them the right to use the mountain to graze their animals and harvest timber.
The courts have mostly upheld that deal for more than 150 years, even as wealthy men have purchased the land. So what happens when the latest owner, an heir to an oil and gas fortune, puts up an 8-foot fence? Settle in for a tale that explains how hard it is to draw the line between private property rights and the rights of people who are rooted to the land by those that came before them.
READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE
Section by Jennifer Brown | Reporter
The Colorado Lens
In the waning days of the school year and the legislative session, there’s still a lot of ground for our visual journalists to cover — indoors and out. Here are some recent images from both sides of the Continental Divide taken by those who put boots on the ground to document moments from the simple to the sublime.
Section by Hugh Carey | Photographer
Flavor of the Week
Tourism options in the Land that Budgeting Forgot
Optimos Travel just went through an enormous amount of trouble to determine something that most Coloradans already knew: Aspen is the nation’s most expensive tourist spot, with an average cost of $761.37 a day, per insanely rich visitor.
You drive south past Woody Creek on Colorado 82 at your own peril, people.
Determined to have an elite getaway, anyway? That’s the spirit. Here are some of the most popular picks for recreation where money is no object.
For the fiscally fit
Section by Peter Moore | Illustrator
SunLit: Sneak Peek
“Shopping All the Way to the Woods” explores birth of outdoor brands
EXCERPT: Although it may sometimes seem that the rise of outdoor gear brands followed the rising popularity of pursuits like camping, hiking and mountaineering, author Rachel Gross explains that the growth of outdoor recreation and the brands that came to define it followed essentially the same timeline. In this excerpt from “Shopping All the Way to the Woods” she charts the birth and growth of two cornerstone Colorado gear-makers.
THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: For Gross, a post-college backpacking trip all over the world opened her eyes to the relationship between the act of outdoor recreation and the gear that both facilitates it and signals a distinct identity. But seeds of her love for the outdoors were planted years earlier. Here’s one snippet from the author Q&A:
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Gross: First, my childhood: Family road trips when I was a child shaped my romantic association with the wild and with mountains in particular. When I was 10 or 11 I longingly read my brother’s “Boy Scout Handbook” and ticked off the merit badges I imagined I would have earned if only I had been eligible to join that club.
Ms. Guth’s 11th-grade history class introduced me to Rocky Mountain School painter Albert Bierstadt and his oversized canvases of sublime mountain beauty in Yosemite. Camping trips with my parents and siblings in
Western national parks taught me how to set up a tent, poke at a fire, and wear a hat to keep warm at night. For an urban upbringing, my young adult life was full of messages that the mountains were where to go to feel real.
READ THE INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL GROSS
Section by Kevin Simpson | Writer
Sunday Reading List
A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.
🌞 Buying the San Souci mobile home community three years ago sounded like a great deal at the time. Now three years on, the 62 households that comprise the co-op face daunting upgrades, such as a new wastewater system, for the aging neighborhood south of Boulder. Kevin Simpson checked in with the folks who stepped up to manage the co-op who are working hard to make sure it remains the home sweet affordable home they thought it was.
🌞 Ire in northern Colorado over how to manage gray wolves with an appetite for domestic cattle keeps rising with every calf killed, Tracy Ross reports. Last week a loose coalition of stockgrowers and county commissioners sent letters to Colorado Parks and Wildlife demanding the agency kill wolves blamed for the deaths of six cows in Grand and Jackson counties over a 16-day period. It’s not going to happen, CPW director Jeff Davis wrote back. It turns out that one of the wolves believed responsible for calf deaths likely has sired a litter of pups. Killing the male, Davis wrote, could cause the den to fail. “This is not a desirable result.”
🌞 Wolf news is as good as any to get introduced to our role in the national Gigafact fact-checking project. Justin George completed a Fact Brief on what aid, exactly, Colorado provides ranchers dealing with the new predators.
🌞 A 3-inch crack in a piece of steel on a huge bridge over Blue Mesa Reservoir put the brakes on commuting between Montrose and Gunnison. While the state Department of Transportation works on a long-term solution, the drive-arounds include following a long gravel road led by a pilot car on a fixed schedule. And in a few cases, a cold ride across the water on a pontoon boat. Olivia Prentzel explains, with the help of Hugh Carey and Dean Krakel.
🌞 The wheels are starting to churn hard at the statehouse. Lawmakers tabled a bill that would have made it legal to sell raw milk. Work began on regulation of generative artificial intelligence. Plans for property tax relief got mapped out. And a bill that threatened to withhold federal highway funding from communities refusing to zone for high-density housing around transit hubs is getting a major rework.
🌞 The owners of office and apartment buildings facing new rules for renovating to meet climate goals set by Denver and Colorado say those rules are illegal because they are stricter than federal standards with similar objectives. Michael Booth reports on the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court to try to overturn the city and state rules.
🌞 You can’t pay the rent with exposure. That’s why some arts organizations that offer residencies have begun to pay artists and cover their expenses as they plot new careers and new projects. Parker Yamasaki caught up with some of the paid residents to find out how the programs have changed their paths.
Section by Dana Coffield | Senior Editor
It hardly seems possible, but we’re barely two months away from the June 25 statewide primary election. The Sun has plenty of coverage planned, but we and dozens of other news outlets in Colorado want to make sure the issues we’ve identified as important jibe with what readers — like you — are basing their voting on. We’d love it if you would fill out our Voter Voices survey and then ask friends and family, wherever they are in Colorado, to share their opinions, too. Here’s the link for you: Voter Voices survey.
Thanks for spending time with us today! We’ll see you back here next Colorado Sunday.
— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun
Corrections & Clarifications
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