Colorado’s population keeps growing, but the growth is not evenly distributed. The Front Range gets more than its share, as do most mountain counties. But out on our High Plains, it’s a different story. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 684 of the nation’s 3,142 counties are losing population. Most of the losers sit on the Great Plains, the bureau reports, and among them are Baca, Bent, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Otero, Sedgwick, Washington and Las Animas counties in Colorado.
Most of these counties got started in the 1880s and prospered through the World War I boom in wheat prices. At the end of the 1920s, crop prices fell just as a long drought struck. Surviving farms got bigger, which meant fewer farm families to support local businesses and schools, and the spiral has been headed downhill for years.
To fight this trend, more than a dozen counties in Kansas have begun offering cheap lots to newcomers, and now our Kiowa County is trying it, too. The county seat is Eads, and an economic development agency there bought 800 acres of farmland on the edge of town.
The land was plotted into 40 parcels, and utilities were run in. Now you can get a 12-acre homesite for less than $20,000. The idea is to attract retirees and location-independent enterprises (we used to call them “modem cowboys”), who will provide some business for a downtown where too many shops are now shuttered. In a few years, there will be a bustling, vibrant community, if all goes well.
But they may need to do more than that if they really want to boom.
For one thing, they should remove some roads. In traditional geography, the more transportation options, the more valuable the place. But in our post-modern Colorado geography, the harder a place is to drive to, the more likely it is to thrive.
Aspen has very pricey real estate, and the highway into town is a dead end for the eight or nine months of the year when Independence Pass is closed. Telluride is likewise at the end of the road. Crested Butte is another dead-end town with expensive houses and a growing population.
So, forget prairie highways headed in all directions. Settle on one road, make sure it ends in town, and block all the others.
Convert those blocked roads into walking, bicycling and horseback trails. Every local survey I’ve seen says such trails are an important amenity for attracting new residents, especially retirees.
The closer I get to retirement age, the more appealing I find a relatively level walking route at 4,500 feet, as opposed to a violently undulating one at 9,000 feet, and I suspect the same is true of millions of my fellow baby boomers. To add some historic aura, resurrect the Smoky Hill and Santa Fe trails.
But strolling geezers aren’t going to provide schoolchildren. The High Plains counties also need to attract younger residents – that is, the Gen X-ers who are often into extreme sports and challenging lifestyles.
You don’t need mountains for that. Offer bungee jumping from the town water tower and parasail glides from the grain elevator. Build some kayak courses in local irrigation canals. Advertise that while mountain trails offer shade and water and are thus for wimpy lightweights, a 276-mile Superhypermegamarathon from Springfield to Julesburg is a true endurance challenge.
Pile on some adventure mystique. After all, the Great Plains offer more ways to kill you than any other part of the country: hail storms of biblical proportions, blue northers that roar down unimpeded from Canada, world-class tornadoes, lightning that flashes when you’re the highest object in sight, alkali water when there’s water at all. Bring back a fair-sized bison herd to add stampedes to the excitement.
Start promoting that angle with slogans like: “Are you tough enough for the High Plains?”; “Short-grass prairie: No room for sissies”; and “Many can cross, but few can stay.”
Low-cost homesites in Eads are a good start on a turnaround for our High Plains. But only a start, and fortunately for these areas, it shouldn’t be that hard to close some roads, construct a few thrills and start promoting our “Last Hard Place.”
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
