Posted inBusiness, Growth, Health, News

The only hospital in the country’s highest altitude city is thriving after near-closure 7 years ago

When the only hospital in Leadville started to close down seven years ago, officials in the highest-altitude city in the country worried they would lose their “heart and soul.” There were layoffs in the nursing department. Extended care patients were moved to nursing homes. A city council member feared retirees would flee to other areas […]

Posted inEnvironment, Growth, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government, Water

Aurora, Colorado Springs own water near Leadville. They may need to redraw a wilderness area to access it.

Aurora and Colorado Springs want to siphon more water from Homestake Creek, even if it requires slightly shrinking the boundary of the Holy Cross Wilderness to build a new reservoir.  The cities’ request to drill test holes to better study the viability of a new dam below their Homestake Reservoir comes as Colorado’s congressional delegation […]

Posted inBusiness, Energy, Environment, Growth, Outdoors

Are Colorado’s oil and gas and recreation industries all that different? Economists say no — and we need to protect them both

When the mines closed and the railroad left town in the 1980s, “pretty much everyone in Salida was unemployed,” Mayor P.T. Wood remembers. And when the West Slope oil and gas industry took a nosedive in 2014, sales tax revenue in Fruita plummeted 90%. Both communities have filled at least part of the void left […]