The ski train, a long-time Denver symbol and one of the city’s greatest signature attractions is being sold, dismantled and shipped to Canada. And with it goes one of the cornerstones of our city and an enormous piece of Denver residents’ hearts.
I personally consider myself lucky for having ridden the ski train just once during my short first months here as a new resident of Denver. I had planned to make it an annual event for my family. Now, what I will have to keep are just the fun memories and the few pictures I took aboard the historic rail cars.
I’m sure so many others who have ridden the train over the years have taken the same pictures of smiling children looking gleefully out the windows as the as locomotive rounded another steep turn overlooking the awesome gorge below.
This move to dismantle Denver’s history is being undertaken by Philip Frederick Anschutz, an American businessman and supporter of conservative Christian causes who boasts an estimated current net worth of around $7.8 billion.
This is the same man who was behind the recent relocation of the University of Colorado Hospital 6.2 miles from Denver to the new $650 million Anschutz Medical Center, a move that further contributed to the sprawling moonscape that is defining the Denver region for the foreseeable future.
From a purely business standpoint, it can be argued that these decisions are by their nature devoid of any sentimentality or sympathy for the people they affect, and that they are simply sound business decisions.
However, while I would never pretend to be anti-business, I would argue that people who have moved essential city services out to the middle of nowhere have no stake in seeing the city or regional economy improve.
And those who destroy a piece of history that has become a collective amenity can only be reviled as traitors to the public good. With the death of the ski train, the removal of another iconographic fixture in our town can only be taken as a personal insult to all of us.
There is an inherent injustice in what amounts to the demolition of a piece of the urban fabric of Denver. Albeit a calculated business decision, this action represents yet another way, among the growing many, that Denver’s function as a destination town is being eroded.
And this erosion is happening here while we watch other major cities virtually lap us in providing a diversity of urban and cultural amenities and attractions.
Overall, such calculated business decisions take a toll on our city’s economy as, one-by-one, they strip the unique and historic features from the city we love, leaving behind only the grey, mundane monoscape of urban form that threatens to make us, in essence, “Anywhere USA.”
I think if we were to take a giant step back from the decision to sell the train, we would see that while it may benefit a few wealthy individuals, it truly represents a net financial loss to the city through the reduction of revenues it generated for businesses near the station. There is also, of course, the incalculable personal loss that so many of us will feel deeply for a long time.
Joshua Schnabel lives in Denver. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
