News

Sept. 17, 1987: Albert Cerise, former manager of the Carbondale Potato Growers Association, reflected on the days when potatoes were the area’s main cash crop. Literally tons of potatoes would go out every morning by rail, he told the Journal, particularly during World War II.

Carbondale’s elected leaders decided on Sept. 12 that they need to get a little tougher in enforcing the town’s ordinances aimed at requiring local households to have bear-proof containers, though the exact nature of the changes has yet to be decided.
At the very least, it appears that starting next spring the town will be requiring local homeowners to have certified bear-proof trash containers and to closely follow the town’s schedule for putting the trash out on the street for pickup.

The Two Rivers Drug Enforcement Team (TRIDENT) has made numerous arrests following an almost two-year investigation, according to a pair of press releases from the interagency task force on Sept. 11.

It has not been a month yet that the Grand Avenue bridge in Glenwood Springs has been closed to traffic, while construction crews have worked on building a new bridge and taking down the old one and dramatically snarled the daily commute of some area workers in the process. In Carbondale, the reactions mostly have been resignation at a necessary bump in the road (the idea being that the modern bridge will add efficiency and a new sparkle to the interconnection between I-70 and the streets of the city).

Instead of subjects, they are called “protagonists,” and they are featured in a new documentary film project as a group of local young farmers who are changing the world of food production, one growing season at a time. The documentary, entitled “How We Grow,” is in the post-production phase, according to co-director Tom Zuccareno, and has been submitted to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival even as Zuccareno and his partner in film, co-editor Haley Thompson, were busy raising money at an event at the Batch tasting room on Main Street in Carbondale on Sept. 6.

My first trip to Hubbard Cave could probably stand in for most visits over the last hundred odd years.
I was maybe 6 years old when my family piled into whichever SUV my dad happened to be driving and made our way up a four-wheel-drive track to the rim of the Glenwood Canyon. Whether the cave was our actual destination or not I’m not sure, but we ended up taking the narrow trail to the mouth of one entrance with one flashlight among us. I’d like to say it made an instant caver out of me, but in truth I barely made it past the drip line before fear of getting lost like Tom Sawyer drove me back.

Sept. 8, 1977: A Grand Junction contractor had little to no luck moving the old Carbondale bridge, which had been sold to Pitkin County the previous year. The 10-story crane brought out for the job apparently exceeded its 27-ton limit and almost tipped into the Roaring Fork, prompting workmen to put it back and try to think of a new plan.

When Brett Stringer, the new Roaring Fork High School principal, was a high schooler himself, he jumped at the opportunity to take a creative approach to his education. His history teacher offered students the option of writing papers or creating videos, and Stringer and his brother began shooting movies of themselves rolling down the street inside of a “time machine” (made out of a trash barrel) which would depart in a trail a flames (á la the movie Back to the Future) as it left their Colorado Springs neighborhood to transport them to another time and place, such as the landing of the Mayflower.

A 35-year-old Denver man fell approximately 75 feet near Hays Creek Falls on Sept. 3, according to a press release from the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office. The incident occurred around 12:35 p.m. and the release did not specify what the man — identified as Nicholas Baltuch — was doing before the fall.

Roaring Fork Valley native Vera Diemoz, whose homes in the area have ranged from Old Snowmass to Silt, turns 106 years old Sept. 1, having welcomed family members from California and other locales to help celebrate the occasion. Diemoz, who lives at Heritage Park in Carbondale, until three years ago was living at a senior residential complex in Glenwood Springs and doing her own cooking, shopping and other chores, according to her regular companion, Diane Welter. Photo by John Colson