Jane Hickcox came to Telluride before it had dreadlocks. She was there before Oprah, before The Plunge was skiable by anybody older than 25 and of sound mind, and long before the San Miguel Valley Corp. bought the valley floor.
She and her husband, Gary, had left their jobs as teachers in Riverside, Calif., after a season when the children couldn’t go outside for recess for 40 days because of smog alerts. There had to be a better place, they said.
In the midst of their soul-searching, they set off on a vacation with their son. It was 1975, and they decided to stop in Telluride, where they had heard there was a new ski area. They wanted to try a few runs.
“We never left,” said Jane.
She chokes back tears as she recalls her impression of driving toward the mining town on Colorado 145 for the first time. “It begins at the valley floor, the broad open space, and then you see the end of the canyon in the distance. As you get closer, you begin to see the historic peaks of some of the old buildings. …
“It’s just magic.”
They went to work at the only jobs they could find. “Our combined income came to $6 an hour,” Jane said. They shared a small house with another couple to cover the cost of rent.
It was the best thing they ever did.
For those of us who discovered Telluride too late – after the swanky Mountain Village was appended on the other side of the ski hill and real-estate values were certifiably insane – their story is a parable about falling in love and daring to take a chance on happiness.
They know this. It’s why they feel such a responsibility to protect the soggy wetlands ranch at the edge of town.
Jane, a board member of Valley Floor Preservation Partners, has been working 60-hour weeks to preserve the valley floor as open space.
Town voters approved a measure to authorize the use of $20 million in revenue bonds to buy the property. A legal team has been hard at work, and hopes were high for a resolution of the 10-year-long battle.
On Friday, a jury in Delta established the value of SMVC’s land at a breathtaking $50 million. That’s nearly $88,000 an acre for the 570-acre valley floor. The value the town had placed on the property was $26 million.
SMVC purchased the property in 1983 for $7 million.
The ruling was a stunner. The jury gave SMVC everything it asked for and, along the way, established a daunting precedent for anyone involved in future condemnation disputes in Colorado.
Nobody in Telluride was happy about resorting to condemnation to preserve the property, Jane said. “I don’t think there’s anybody in the community that wished this would be the path.”
Still, they’re not quitters.
Jane spent the weekend on the phone trying to raise money. The judge’s deadline for producing the money is expected to be 90 days at the latest. “Another $24 million is a tough nut to crack,” she said.
So far, she has 300 contributors from 23 states and Bermuda. They include a $70 donation from a 12-year-old girl who sold lemonade and cookies at a roadside stand and a seven-figure commitment from an unnamed donor.
They will need a lot more seven-figure commitments.
It’s far from impossible.
“This is a very capable community financially,” Jane said of the town where a two-bedroom Victorian sells for $2 million and the founder of eBay dabbles in multimillion-dollar deals. “It’s also a very highly ethical community in the conservation arena.”
A lot of that ethic exists because of people like the Hickcoxes.
They, like so many other dreamers who escaped to Telluride, believe there’s more to the town than rollicking good capital gains.
Telluride, they say, is a feeling.
You sense it when you round the curve on 145 and see the elk grazing in the meadow and your jaw drops in awe at the sight of the water falling in the canyon.
“This is personal,” said Jane. “I don’t want to be part of a community that sits back only to lament what might have been.”
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@ denverpost.com.
