Woe is us. Yes, the millions of people in the Great American West who depend on the snowpack for 80% of our water. This year has shaken us to the bone. Apparently, there was a warmer and drier year, winter 1980, that we are competing with. Oddly, more prominent in people’s memory was the terrible […]
John Armstrong
Posted inColumns
CVEPA Views: McClure lore and the road to power
At a town hall-style meeting in late 1971, the White River National Forest (USFS) presented its vision to designate the Chair Mountain-McClure Pass area as “primitive.” The area was basically untouched save for a horse and foot trail starting at the top of the 8,755-foot pass and an annual sheep grazing permit. There was, however, […]
Posted inOpinion
CVEPA Views: You can’t get there from here
How long does it take to get to Marble? Gus Darien told me that when he was a young man he could hop on the train to Carbondale. The train stopped at his Marble ranch to take on water or maybe coal from Camp Genter Mine and cabbages and raspberries from Clotan Moore’s place above […]
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CVEPA Views: Herald Filoha
What cause to rejoice! The long overdue end to the illegal closure of a Pitkin County right of way and road has come to a settlement. The Rock Creek Wagon Road between Redstone and Filoha Meadows Nature Preserve, colloquially known as Dorais Way, will reopen in time for the Preserve’s summer season. This dirt road […]
Posted inColumns
CVEPA Views: An eye to the past, an eye to the future
There was a moment when I discovered something truly magnificent — when a great light struck me, when something new, different and special opened up for me. I may have been still in grammar school when my friend Julius took me on a hike above his neighborhood. We passed a small pond on the edge […]
Posted inColumns
CVEPA Views: Treachery at the highest level
It has been a long, slow evolution in the United States to achieve the environmental standards and protections that the American people have come to benefit from. We stand stunned at the short period of time that these achievements have unraveled. Clean air and water… are they not inalienable rights? Greed, an unquenchable thirst for […]
Posted inColumns
The Will to conserve
Next month there will be a celebration of land conservation. Conservation: the word comforts me; it has no negative charge. It is green, noncontroversial, popularly embraced and non-partisan. The Oxford dictionary defines conservation as “prevention of wasteful use of a resource.” Property owners may have the will to conserve but seek the means to conserve. […]
Posted inOpinion
CVEPA Views: Winter of ‘83 stampede
The breaking of branches and the thunder of hooves struck trepidation in my heart. The fading light of December dusk made the scene even more surreal. My girlfriend and I were directly in the path of a stampede of about 50 elk! The snow was so deep and the autumn so cold that the elk […]
Posted inNews, Uncategorized
CSQ strikes ‘gold’ in Marble
In the fall of 2022, Colorado Stone Quarries, Inc. (CSQ) announced in a newsletter the discovery of a special type of gold-veined white marble at its Pride of America Quarry (formerly Colorado Yule Marble Quarry) just south of the town of Marble. It was the latest in a series of developments at the quarry since […]
Posted inColumns, Opinion, Uncategorized
Have you seen the Ghost of Marble Past?
On a gray winter day, you can hear the eerie wind whistle down the long corridors which stretch out almost as long as a football field. It is the skeleton of the 200-room Marble Ski Area base lodge. (The actual size is debatable, but it is very large!) The sprawling roof can just barely be […]