Three things are true: One: I crush on my birth state and forever state of Colorado. Two: I do not crush on acronyms. I loathe them. I loathe them because they generally signal something suspiciously complicated; meetings with too many acronyms make me want a whiskey. Three: Yet I crush on my job shepherding students […]
Gunnison
Posted inNews, Transportation
Colorado’s mountain airports are thriving despite national rural air service struggle
Colorado’s mountain-town airports are busier than ever despite airlines limping through a pilot shortage and slashing service to smaller communities. The number of passengers flying in and out of Aspen, Durango, Eagle County, Gunnison, Hayden and Montrose in 2022 is on a record-setting pace, marking a rural airport strength that does not reflect national trends. […]
Posted inHousing
Colorado tried to protect people who live in mobile home parks. A Gunnison community fell through the cracks.
The new owner of the renamed Ski Town Village hasn’t filled the potholes, cut the trees that threaten to fall on homes, or fixed the spotty water supply. But he has raised rents by 73%.
Posted inEducation, News, Outdoors
The new standards for testing outdoor gear are being created by Colorado university students
GUNNISON — In the basement of the new Paul M. Rady engineering school at Western Colorado University, professor Greg VanderBeek directs six students using a horizontal bandsaw to cut 2-inch steel tubing. “Remember, perfection happens at the welding table,” VanderBeek says as the students measure. Soon the students are grinding corners and welding a frame […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
As hospitals fill up, paramedics — like those in Gunnison — spend more time moving patients, less on emergencies
By Helen Santoro, Kaiser Health News GUNNISON— The night after Thanksgiving, a small ambulance service that covers a huge swath of southwestern Colorado got a call that a patient needed an emergency transfer from the hospital in Gunnison to a larger one with an intensive care unit 65 miles away in Montrose. The patient — […]
Posted inColoradans
Fifty years ago, a deadly school bus crash shook Gunnison. Some survivors needed decades to heal.
As Pat MacIntosh travels U.S. 50 east out of Gunnison, climbing the switchbacks to Monarch Pass, the view through the windshield looks different than it did on that September morning nearly a half-century ago. Rain showers test the wipers from a shifting ceiling of gray; back then, sunlight streamed from autumn blue skies. Just over […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News, Water
Three Colorado River Basin reservoirs will be partially drained to keep Lake Powell producing hydropower
The nation’s Western drought is so severe that federal predictions of Colorado River flows into Lake Powell for 2021 dropped by the equivalent of 10 Lake Dillons in just six months, according to a key new report. In issuing the report Friday, U.S. water engineers said they will for the first time take water […]
Posted inBusiness, Housing, News, Newsletters, Outsider
Storage units becoming as hard to get as affordable housing as wealthy remote workers take over the high country
Chase Beck has fielded dozens of calls like this in the past few months. “They say ‘I just had the floor taken out from under me. I’ve been living here for years. I need to move out in 30 days and I’ve got nowhere to go. Can you help?’” Beck says. The waiting list at […]
Posted inOpinion
When the Spanish flu hit Colorado, there was no vaccine on the horizon. Here’s how Gunnison coped.
The coronavirus pandemic hit Colorado and the United States hard in 2020. Over 300,000 Americans were dead by late December, hospitals had run out of beds and the U.S. economy had been shattered. However, by the end of the month vaccines had been developed and were starting to be administered to people across the nation. […]
Posted inColoradans, Politics and Government
Black Lives Matter protests in Gunnison County showed people of color they have more allies than they realized
Sun slants through the buildings on Elk Avenue in Crested Butte, turning cottonwood fluff into floating sparkle. The surrounding hillsides glow green and rise up into red-hued peaks, some of which still hold bright, white snow. It’s a real-life snow globe scene, and Chloe Bowman stands at the center of it, suspended in the surreal. […]