News

First Friday (March 3) celebrates the Carbondale Creative District as a whole, while the Carbondale Clay Center also presents its annual “Pairings.” The event allows folks to pair ceramic cups created by more than 30 local and national artists with handcrafted local and state beverages.
After two years of holding “Pairings” offsite, the Clay Center is bringing the fund-raiser back to its gallery/studios spaces at the east end of Main Street.

The two men suspected of robbing a Carbondale convenience store at gunpoint on Feb. 16, and then leading area law enforcement officials on a two-day chase through the back-country near Basalt, remain in the Garfield County Jail while awaiting trial on charges of armed robbery.
The two men, Nicholas Ameral and Benjamin Weeks, who are cousins and both 19 years old, were arrested on Feb. 22 during a traffic stop in Basalt.

Carbondale’s elected leaders on Feb. 28 approved an extension of the plat-filing deadline for the Carbondale Marketplace project (site of a new City Market grocery story,) the fourth time the Board of Trustees has had to do so. But while the move was unanimous (except for Trustee Heather Henry, who was not present at the meeting), it was not entirely enthusiastic.
“I hope this is the last time we have to do this,” said Trustee Marty Silverstein.

After a competitive Western Slope League season that saw Roaring Fork win one game on a buzzer beater, and Basalt reel off 14 straight wins at one point, the teams take 17-5 and 19-3 records respectively into the 32-team state 3A basketball playoffs starting on March 3.
Meanwhile, Western Slope tournament winner Coal Ridge stays at home on March 3 in its bid to advance beyond the regional leg of the state tournament.

February 21 was a rough day at Crystal River Elementary School.
That’s when Principal Matt Koenigsknecht had to break the news to certain teachers that their current jobs won’t exist next year. It’s a counterintuitive conundrum for a school that has otherwise made tremendous strides with significantly improved test scores and a new sense of identity around “project-based” learning.

A smattering of Latino and Anglo businesses in Carbondale closed in conjunction with nationwide political “actions” on Feb. 16 and 17.
On Feb. 16, it was a nationwide Day Without Immigrants strike to show how much the U.S. needed its immigrant workforce, and an informal survey of the town showed that at least four businesses closed their doors for the day.

In articles from the Feb. 22, 1977 issue of the Roaring Fork Valley Journal:
• The Carbondale Board of Trustees was preparing to hold their meeting in the “new” town hall building at Second and Garfield. Previous to that, town hall was located on Main Street in one of the bottom spaces in the Dinkel Building.

Lucianna Phillips witnessed a Peruvian woman this week, who thought she herself witnessed a miracle at the same time. The miracle, as conveyed by Lucianna in her Feb. 20 blog: murky, undrinkable water poured from one bucket to another, turned into clear, clean drinking water in Huanchaco, Peru.

Authorities on Feb. 22 were still looking for two suspects in a Feb. 16 armed robbery in Carbondale, after two men thought to be the robbers eluded police on the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 21, by jumping out of an emergency window on a Roaring Fork Transportation Authority bus stopped at the Holland Hills area on Highway 82 near Basalt.

The Sutey-Two Shoes land swap, involving a total of roughly 1,200 acres of publicly-owned property at the base of Mount Sopris near Carbondale and other public lands in western Colorado, remains in a state of suspended animation. As the trade now stands – according to officials of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and volunteer members of a group fighting against the swap – a panel of administrative judges in Washington, D.C., is preparing to mull over questions about whether the public is getting fair value for its property in the proposed land trade with Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner and his wife, Abigail.