PAONIA — Sally Kane moved to the North Fork Valley when she was 8. It was 1972, her mother was a potter and part of a counterculture “back to the land” movement that had spread across Colorado. They lived on a farm, kept goats and a large garden.
“It was a really inspiring way to grow up,” Kane said. “But the other side of it was that there was, is, and maybe always will be, a culture clash between old-timers and newcomers.”
The North Fork Valley has long been home to three major industries: agriculture, coal mining and the arts. Over the years, they’ve coexisted, but volleyed influence and economic dominance in the region. As coal use declines across the country, and Colorado’s coal-fired power plants meet their retirement dates, the state is looking to the valley’s creative industries as part of an economic counterweight.
In January, the North Fork Valley Creative Coalition, an umbrella organization for business owners in Paonia, Hotchkiss, Crawford and between, received a $75,000 grant from the state Office of Just Transition to bump up the coalition’s part-time executive director to a full-time role, and create a programming space in downtown Paonia, where they’ll host professional development workshops for small-business owners.
Of course, it’s not quite as simple as swapping out one major economic driver for another.
“We’re all so connected. One of us might be on the arts track, but we still know what’s going on in the orchards, and what’s happening with the price of beef,” said Jess Dervin-Ackerman, executive director of the coalition. “It’s all interwoven, because they are neighbors and our friends, and we are all affected by that.”
Replacing coal jobs one-for-one is unlikely
Since 2021 the Office of Just Transition has awarded nearly $9 million in grants to coal-mining and power-producing towns. The state agency focuses on helping communities replace two things if and when coal leaves: good jobs and property taxes.
How each community goes about that task is open ended. The office has funded worker retraining programs, an “entrepreneurship center” in Hayden, and a new boat ramp and whitewater park in Craig. Two grants awarded to Delta and Gunnison counties, the region where the creative coalition operates, are for the construction of an industrial business park and workforce housing in Delta.
“We’ve said from the beginning, this is not about replacing megawatts with megawatts,” said Wade Buchanan, director of the Office of Just Transition. “Energy can be a big part of that, because these are energy communities and they’ve got a skilled workforce. But we really sell ourselves short in the community if that’s all we think about.”
With the North Fork Valley grant, Buchanan sees a community trying to diversify its economy through opening up new shopfronts — which generate property taxes — and attracting tourists to big seasonal festivals. But replacing coal jobs one-for-one probably isn’t going to happen, nor is it a realistic goal with the state resources, Buchanan said. The office’s budget is allocated each year by the state legislature.
Coal jobs are hard to replace, he said. “The coal industry pays well, has good benefits, and is one of the most unionized sectors in the state. These are really good jobs. It’s hard to come up with jobs that are equivalent.”
That will be especially challenging in the North Fork Valley, where many workers in the other main industries — arts and agriculture — often work multiple jobs to make ends meet.
It’s a hustle economy, said Robin Doss, program director for the North Fork Valley Creative Coalition. “But there’s a lot more humanity in the hustle here,” she added. People give each other space, understand when someone has to leave one job early to make it to their next. Dervin-Ackerman worked at a farm and a kimchi company before the state grant allowed her to get paid for a full-time position.
“I mean, I’ve been working full-time hours for much longer than that,” Dervin-Ackerman, the coalition’s director, said. “But now I’m being paid for full-time work.”
Funding is helping small businesses expand
Another part of the state grant will go toward opening a shopfront in Paonia as a hub for small-business owners. The coalition already offers professional development classes throughout the valley, teaching skills like how to make sure a business is showing up in Google searches.
Brandt Bishop, the owner of Best Slope Pizza, has spent the past eight years studying the valley’s specific cycles for business. His strategy can be summed up briefly as: work smarter, not harder.
Bishop runs Best Slope out of the basement of a historic school building outside Hotchkiss. He sells his sourdough-crust pizzas from the window of a trailer that he tows to local vineyards, breweries and town events.
After leaving Crawford for culinary school at age 18, then working a stint in fine dining in Seattle, Bishop came back to the valley and picked up shifts at a local wood-fired pizza spot. He watched as the business took on more staff and expanded its hours, from three nights to six, but still sold the same number of pizzas over the course of a week. The business closed not long after he was hired.
“I sat with that. It started to percolate that psychologically we put off what’s available to us,” Bishop said. “That’s fine in a city, because there’s 12,000 other people around that may want dinner that night. But here, if a handful of people go, ‘oh, we’ll get it next time,’ that’s a crusher for that night.”
After years of trial and error, starting three different food-related businesses, Bishop has settled on a schedule that works for both him and his valley patrons. He is open two to four nights per week, depending on the season, never more.
Growing jobs in agriculture, arts and tourism
Along with its new business programming, the coalition has also been slowly expanding its portfolio. In 2022, it took over ownership of the valley’s largest summer draw, the Mountain Harvest Festival, from longtime organizers and a volunteer board. In 2025, the coalition picked up Pickin’ in the Park, a popular concert series in August that has attracted a local crowd for decades.
That same year, the organization expanded its mission from more of a marketing agency for local businesses to a more holistic approach that considers economic development through the lens of arts and culture.
Which means, with regard to the festival, the goal isn’t just to keep it propped up, but help business owners sustainably prepare for an influx of visitors.
A survey of 159 of last year’s Mountain Harvest Festival attendees found they came from at least 72 postal codes — including one Switzerland and one from London. Nearly three-quarters of survey respondents planned to stay overnight, the majority in local lodging or camping nearby.
Last year, Paonia ran out of lodging. Two years ago, one of the town’s main restaurants was out of food by 5 p.m. on Saturday.
“It’s a little bit of tension, because there’s always that feeling of, we don’t want this to get away from us,” said Kane, the longtime resident who serves on the coalition board. “But honestly that critique usually comes from people who have lived here for five years, not people who have seen it go through hard times.”
Kane, for her part, has seen the town go through hard times. She remembers plywood nailed to the shopfronts in the 1980s when oil tanked. She’s watched families leave the valley as coal mines shut down, heading for hard-rock mines in Utah.
“It isn’t as simple as, like, it’s always going great when the coal mines are running,” she said. “It’s always been tough to make it in rural America.”
Right now, Kane feels there’s momentum in the arts and culture scene, and wants the coalition to take full advantage, whether through marketing agricultural products more widely, or drawing in more visitors to enjoy the valley’s famous views of the West Elk Mountains.
“I’ve advocated for rural communities my whole life through 30 years in public radio,” Kane said. “It’s always been tricky to make the case for why we matter, when we have (fewer) people. You have to incorporate that we hold resources, that we hold open space, and we care for it. These things are also essential for a quality human life, and cannot always be measured in numbers.”