ROCKY FORD — Seven people have been identified as suspects in the alleged kidnapping, torture and attempted murder of a woman in southeastern Colorado in 2017, authorities announced Friday. They are suspected of being involved in the incident at an apartment in Rocky Ford, a city of about 4,000 people about 160 miles southeast of […]
Rocky Ford
Posted inClimate, Environment, News
While Colorado’s eastern half revels in rain, the Western Slope is still stuck in a drought
The Ute Mountain Ute Reservation sits at the lower end of a 40-mile, gravity-fed canal, and waits for whatever water the towering San Juan mountains will give up for the season. By the second week of May, it was clear 2021 will be a bust. The Utes’ farm enterprise has already switched to hopes for […]
Posted inNews, Politics and Government
In Colorado’s hard-to-count communities, census outreach and coronavirus support are one and the same
To say that 2020 has not been a normal year to take a national census — well, it doesn’t quite capture the full extent of the situation. The Census Bureau’s normally nonpartisan operations have been repeatedly undercut, whether it’s in the form of chronic underfunding, the federal administration’s fear-stoking attempt in 2019 to add a […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, Health, News, Politics and Government
Colorado’s rural pharmacies wrestle against big business to remain community cornerstones
CHEYENNE WELLS – Ted Billinger Jr. closed his pharmacy in this prairie town on March 13, 2019, as the worst storm on record hit Colorado. He delivered a prescription for a child with the flu and one to the local nursing home, went home, had a heart attack in his backyard and died. For nearly […]
Posted inEnvironment, News, Water
How tiny Branson, through crowdfunding and new water tech, saved itself from drying up
Faced with an inadequate filtration system and a $1.2 million estimate to fix it, the community of 55 people got creative. And it paid off.
Posted inColoradans, Health, News, Politics and Government
Cigarettes all over again? Colorado has the highest youth vaping rate in the country.
Jim Lynch mastered the fake yawn, stretching out his arm and bringing it to his mouth during class, then pausing to pull a drag from the Juul tucked up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. The high school junior held the vapor in his mouth for 10 seconds, waiting for it to evaporate before he took […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Environment, Health, News, Politics and Government
Recycling can be a hard sell in rural Colorado. That hasn’t discouraged a resourceful nonprofit effort in tiny Swink.
SWINK — Dee Hostetler walks through the quiet, cavernous brick building past pallets stacked high with translucent, kaleidoscopic bales of recycled plastic that filter the morning light like stained glass. The hollowed-out remains of this former Holly Sugar factory, all 27,000 square feet of it, stands just a block off the short strand of U.S. […]