Telluride – It’s high season for mud. Skiers have fled. Festivalgoers haven’t streamed in yet. But it’s the time of plenty.
Aficionados of free are flocking to the iconic downtown Free Box, where those heading out of town at ski season’s end leave an extra-large largesse of household castoffs each spring.
But questions surround the future of this 31-year-old shrine to having and having not.
Some believe it is high time the Free Box is chucked or moved to the outskirts of town. Others believe users simply need a lesson or two on what’s trash and what’s worthy.
“The Free Box is an institution that has become a dump, and we need to address that,” said Telluride Mayor John Pryor.
Recently, the cubbyholes in the tall wooden box on Pine Street near Colorado Avenue were overflowing with ski gloves and hats, a red leatherette backpack, a fleece jacket with grazing moose, a set of maroon sheets, a coffee maker, a vacuum cleaner, gym shorts and light-up sneakers. Neatly stacked books in one cubby included “Selling for Dummies” and “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.” Another cubby held a half box of rigatoni, a quarter bottle of syrup and a smidgen of spray paint. Seen- better-days futons were leaned against the nearby wall.
The box was started in 1976, when Telluride was a fledgling ski town and the back-to-earth types who moved in liked the idea of recycling their usable goods.
Stan Berryman, Telluride public works director, said it probably was copied from a “free box” that long ago disappeared from downtown Aspen.
Telluride’s box operates on a basic rule: “Take what you can use and leave what you no longer use” (now printed also in Spanish). But the site is abused because the town doesn’t have a dump. The closest landfill is in Norwood, nearly 40 miles away.
So some people leave what nearby bike-shop owner Jonny Haas calls “crap,” and town workers must go in with a front-end loader most days to clear out what should have been taken to the dump in the first place. It costs the town about $65,000 a year.
Telluride Marshall Jim Kolar said there also are complaints about late- night noise and drug dealing in the area.
“It would be a huge mistake – it would be a crime to get rid of this,” said Phillip Jackson as he pointed to the puffy North Face jacket zipped to his chin. He had pulled it from the box the week before.
Many officials admit the donation site may be a headache, but it’s a funky, integral part of Telluride – the legendary place where a Cadillac was once left at the curb and the title pinned to the box. Any attempt to discard the box would be political suicide.
“There would be a big outcry,” Berryman said. “I don’t think the council wants a standing-room-only crowd yelling at them for taking away the Free Box.”
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
