The town of Ophir has a short to-do list.
First: Save the valley for posterity.
Cross that off – pretty much done.
Second: Create posterity.
It turns out that the procreation of a future generation in this town – about 5 miles as the crow flies over Palmyra Peak from Telluride – is also going well.
“We’ve gone from having no babies to having or expecting 15 babies this year,” says Monica Carey, mayor of this town of 120 people – so far.
The town, the Trust for Public Land and a willing landowner have joined forces to forestall the proliferation of townhomes, condos and other emblems of civilization in the part of Ophir’s gorgeous alpine cradle that isn’t already national forest or in a conservation easement.
Since 1992, town officials and residents have patiently scrounged for resources or traded in-town lots to gather up 200 acres of old mining claims and other inholdings on the slopes above them. They secured the lands with conservation easements.
It’s a “pretty amazing” accomplishment for a town with a town hall and post office but no stores or sales tax, Carey says.
Many Ophir residents work in nearby Telluride, but the town does have some cottage industries: self-employed people such as artists, a tile worker, a photographer and so on.
Recently, the town’s efforts to save the valley got a tremendous boost from local landowner Glenn Pauls, a 43-year-old off- road-driving enthusiast who has patiently and quietly bought up 1,200 acres of mining claims above town since the mid-1980s.
“I just wanted to keep houses off the hillsides,” Pauls says. “When I started buying claims in my 20s, my friends thought I was crazy. They told me I could be buying cars instead.”
Now Pauls is partnering with the Trust for Public Land to transfer the lands into the Uncompahgre National Forest, says Doug Robotham, the trust’s executive director for Colorado.
Robotham estimates that purchase and transfer of all of Pauls’ acreage could take a few years and ultimately cost about $5 million. But, he says, the Bush administration is supporting an $850,000 allocation in next year’s budget to begin. And that’s not a baby step, he says.
“We’re grateful to have such a good neighbor and willing landowner,” Carey says. “Our small town of Ophir is very proud of the fact that we’ve created such a tangible legacy. … And now we’re having a baby boom.”
That’s pretty amazing, too, for a town with 70 households and an average of 1.7 people per household.
The 51-year-old three-term mayor says “the open-space initiative was my baby.”
Robotham, whose job is to conserve beautiful places all over the state, waxes more lyrically about Ophir than most spots.
“I think the feeling you get when you go to the Ophir Valley is like a gorgeous, warm embrace,” he says. “It truly is one of Colorado’s special places.”
The town, the county, private landowners and conservation groups “have played to each other’s strengths,” Robotham says, to make the story of the Ophir Valley end differently than those of so many of Colorado’s mountain paradises, now developed.
A few months ago, the San Miguel Conservation Foundation bought the Gamebird property, a claim of 20 acres or so that was the last piece needed to preserve Waterfall Canyon just outside Ophir.
“It’s also a little Shangri-La,” Robotham says. “These are the things that put a smile on your face when you’re stuck in traffic on I-25.”
But the town of Ophir needs a new to-do list.
Carey says the town will begin an update of its master plan.
Having babies changes everything.
“I think we’ll be needing some amenities we haven’t even thought of yet,” she says.
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or edraper@denverpost.com.
