The federal Bureau of Land Management has issued a final environmental impact statement for the “Over the River” project proposed by the artist Christo.
He wants to suspend translucent fabric panels over portions of the Arkansas River between Salida and Cañon City. Installation and removal would take about three years; in the middle would be a two-week viewing period tentatively scheduled for August of 2014.
I do worry about whether this area could handle the amount of visitation that “Over the River” is supposed to inspire. But I’m not worried about the project’s possible effects on the canyon, despite all I read about how Christo is about to ruin some natural wonder.
That’s because there’s precious little that’s “natural” about the Arkansas River between Salida and Cañon City.
We can start with the course of the river itself, which has been altered over the years by railroad and highway construction. Nothing major, perhaps, but the rocks that get blasted down the embankment do affect the river’s course, as do bridge abutments and the like.
Now consider the water in the river. While it is true that there’s no dam across “the free-flowing Arkansas River” above Pueblo Reservoir, it’s also true that most of its major tributaries — South Arkansas, Chalk Creek, Cottonwood Creek, Clear Creek, Lake Creek, etc. — do have dams that help control the river’s flow and make for a long rafting season.
Further, a fair amount of the water in the river is diverted from the Western Slope via the Twin Lakes and Boustead tunnels, along with several Continental Divide-crossing ditches. So neither the river’s course nor its flow is natural.
As for fish, the Arkansas is a world-class brown trout fishery, and it also boasts some rainbows. However, the brown is a German import, while the rainbow hails from California. Between them, these unnatural immigrants have pretty well displaced the “natural” cutthroat trout.
About 20 years go, the legislature christened part of this route “Bighorn Sheep Canyon,” and it’s fitting. I often see bighorns along the river.
Way back on Jan. 1, 1807, while trying to descend the Arkansas hereabouts, explorer Zebulon Pike “found on the way one of the mountain rams.”
However, our gold rush of 1859 led to market hunting of bighorns, which were also killed by diseases contracted from domestic sheep. By 1950 the nearest herd was more than 20 miles away from the canyon; the Colorado Division of Wildlife has performed a dozen bighorn transplants since 1980, and now there’s a stable population of about 520 sheep.
The sheep we see along the river are a result of human intervention designed to reverse the extirpation produced by earlier human activities. That may be commendable, but how is it natural?
And it isn’t as though the river is a natural transportation corridor. When Pike tried to follow it down from the site of Salida in late 1806, he saw that “there being no roads of buffalo, or signs of horses, I am convinced that neither these animals nor the aborigines of the country ever take this route from the source of the river out of the mountains.”
The railroad wasn’t built through there until 1880, and it was 1915 before cars could take what has become U.S. 50. Throw in the old quarries and kilns along the way, as well as power lines and subdivisions, and you’ve got a zone that’s about as “natural” as Mount Rushmore.
So if you want to oppose “Over the River” because it seems like a foolish ego trip, fine. But if you’re concerned about “nature,” then it would make more sense to support the permanent closing of that unnatural corridor, U.S. 50.
Freelance columnist Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
