The responses to the survey were anonymous but they told a vivid story: Getting around Saguache County is a hassle for many.
It covers 3,200 square miles but has only around 6,500 residents. It lies in the northern corner of the San Luis Valley, with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east and the San Juans to the west. Tourists flock there because it has Joyful Journey Hot Springs, Penitente Canyon, a Dark Sky reserve and part of Great Sand Dunes National Park. The majority of travelers come down U.S. 285, which drops in from the north before making a gentle swing west at the town of Saguache, population 534, and then heads south, toward the junction sending them on to Wolf Creek ski area, Pagosa Springs and Durango.
But if you live in one of many towns surrounding 285 — in Crestone (pop. 141), say, or Moffat (pop. 108), or even Center, with a population of about 1,900 — and you don’t have a car, or you share a car, or you have a car but no money to maintain it, then you know your life could be so much better if someone would address your public transportation problem.
It had been overlooked because “Saguache County, the whole San Luis Valley, is forgotten,” says Chris Cottrell, clean transportation manager at Four Corners Office for Resource Efficiency, or 4CORE. “But what are the transportation needs in Saguache County? Transportation.”
4CORE connects people and communities to resources for clean transportation, renewable energy and water conservation. Earlier this year, the nonprofit received $530,000 from a $7.5 billion pot of money the Biden administration’s Department of Energy granted to 223 nationwide projects. The $530,000 flowed from 4CORE into four rural southwestern Colorado communities, including Saguache County, to take the first steps in addressing their transportation problems.
Saguache County received just $50,000. Still, Ame Warner, executive director of the Saguache County Sustainable Environment and Economic Development , or ScSEED, called it “transformative” for her community.
“We were making significant progress, completing extensive community engagement, gathering survey responses from over 10% of our entire county population and preparing a comprehensive existing-conditions data report to guide future transportation planning,” she said in an email.
The survey showed how badly a transportation overhaul was needed. The work increased Warner’s reach. And with 4CORE involved it would be about more than just moving people — it would tackle moving them efficiently.
But everything came to a screeching halt when grant recipients were notified that their funding had been withdrawn in early October.
“The consequences are immediate and devastating, not only for ScSEED’s operations, but for the trust we’ve built with residents who believed this work would bring tangible solutions to rural transportation barriers,” Warner told The Colorado Sun.
The survey says …
Saguache County’s survey focused on the towns of Saguache, Center and Crestone. And “each population center voiced very different transportation needs,” Warner said.
In Center, where the population changes as agricultural seasons change, she said many out-of-country workers live in workforce housing and can walk to the tiny downtown. But they can’t get out of town or shop in other areas, “and even locals who work the harvest season can struggle to get to the fields and warehouses.”
In Crestone, residents want a shuttle that can get them to Moffat, on Colorado 17 (13 miles away), where they can catch Colorado Department of Transportation Bustang Outrider bus to Salida or Pueblo. But only one runs per day.
Getting to medical services requires a long haul as well. From Center, the closest family medicine practice is either in Alamosa, 29 miles away, or Monte Vista, 15 miles away. It’s an hour from Crestone to get to a family doc in Salida. And “if someone lives out past La Garita on County Road whatever, you’re looking at an hour and a half in perfect driving conditions,” Cottrell said.
The getting around is good in Saguache, however, where Warner said her crew “didn’t see a single project need surface.” But the town is famous for “its beautiful big trees that have made walking on most existing sidewalks a very real threat to breaking bones, as several senior citizens attested,” she said.
Sketchy or nonexistent sidewalks are ubiquitous in towns throughout the county, according to Warner. Someone with limited mobility told her when she goes to Center, she has to wheel in the street “and people will call the cops on me.”
Saguache County’s transportation issues also intersect with other factors.
The per capita income is just under $55,000 “and owning a car is expensive,” Cottrell said. “So even if a family has a car, if one of the parents takes it to work, the other person can’t go to work or they’re stuck at home with the kids. And a lot of people living there, who we talked to, can’t get anywhere if their car breaks down.”
A local shuttle service does exist, Mountain Valley Transit. It serves the six San Luis Valley towns, but rides are limited. “And they just, you know, they can only help a certain number of people,” Cottrell added.
But as challenging as the loss of funding is to Saguache County, he said, “when you multiply it to the magnitude of the $7.5 billion cut by the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought in blue states, “it’s not only counterproductive for this country. The real world impact is vast.”
Saguache County “kneecapped but resilient”
Cottrell said $50,000 may not seem like much, but it was allowing Warner and her organization to do the work needed to move from qualifying for small, “piecemeal” grants to larger, more impactful ones.
“(Funders) want to see quantitative and qualitative data as to why? What do you need? Who says you need this? Prove it. That’s what a needs assessment is,” he said.
Assessments are arduous. They cost a bundle. “And a lot of small, rural municipalities don’t have the funds to have extra hands on deck,” he added. “But if Saguache County had, like, a comprehensive document, then they could apply for grants at a larger scale, get a lot more money and have a bigger impact.”
The consequences of Saguache County’s funding loss “are immediate and devastating, not only for ScSEED’s operations, but for the trust we’ve built with residents who believed this work would bring tangible solutions to rural transportation barriers,” Warner told The Colorado Sun in an email.
“ScSEED is a strictly nonpartisan organization. Our mission is simple: to improve the lives of Saguache County residents and protect the environment we depend on,” she added.
The organization operates almost entirely on grants and donations, and Warner is the only paid staff member. So the loss jeopardizes not only the work they’ve started but broader initiatives she oversees, from community benefit agreements for utility-scale solar development to workforce housing, downtown revitalization and fiscal sponsorship for local nonprofits, she said.
Cottrell calls what happened to ScSEED and Saguache County being “kneecapped” by Trump’s cuts. “But it doesn’t mean they won’t survive,” he said. “They’re resilient and they’ll make it work.”
Nor is the future entirely hopeless.
His job includes “traveling around southwest Colorado, trying to do a lot of outreach, to tell people about all the free grant money that’s available to them to get more electrons into this corner of the state.”
He represents eight grants, from the energy office, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Department of Transportation, he said. He’s not exactly sure how much money all those grants add up to, just that “it’s a big pot of money” for Colorado’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Roadmap 2.0.
Not all of those grants are going to be appropriate for an organization like ScSEED, he added, “but they’ll survive and make it work.” And here in Colorado, “Gov. Polis is still going to continue pushing ahead with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.