ARVADA —As long as he can remember, 86-year-old Howard Carr said horses have been woven into the fabric of life on Arvada’s west side.
“I delivered the Denver Post I was about 12,” Carr said. “At the end of what is now Eldridge Street, there was a gravel pit down there and the would stop and bring the papers out in the evening. I picked them up and delivered them on a Shetland pony.”
A generation ago, the area west of Ward Road was agricultural, with family farms cultivating apple trees, strawberry patches, celery and other produce.
Horses were a necessity needed to carve out a living. Even if a family didn’t own a horse, most people still knew how to mount and ride one, said Steve West, whose family homesteaded the area in the early 1870s and still runs horses, owns parcels of agricultural land, and operates a feed and supply store at 7040 Indiana St.
A trip today through the rough areas of what’s called the Fairmount community — touching Arvada, Golden, Wheat Ridge and unincorporated Jefferson County from Interstate 70 north to about 64th Avenue and running from Ward Road west to Colorado 193 — shows a high concentration of horse facilities, especially along Indiana Street.
There’s five large operations in the area housing up to 75 horses each, and many streets have properties with horses and private breeding or boarding operations.
While at first glance this would appear to be a thriving horse community — and in many ways it is — local horse lovers say it’s more like one of the last vestiges of a bygone era
“Oh, there’s way less horses out here than 20 years ago,” West said. “We were in the thick of the rodeo business running probably 250 head of horses, 50 head of bulls and all the steers and calves needed to produce rodeos. It’s shrunk dramatically…that’s a lot of mouths to feed.”
Marci Fassel and her husband, Michael, own Silver Quarter Acres, an all-discipline horse boarding and training facility that houses 75 horses at 5551 Indiana St.
Marci Fassel said it’s always been a tough business, and many operations like theirs are feeling pressure as neighbors sell land for development and property taxes go up. And horse facilities are also competing for the attention of a new generation less likely to have exposure to rural activities.
She said there’s more options than ever for people wanting to work with horses, like leasing and boarding them on a property, but also more competition from other activities.
“These activities where a person doesn’t have to own a horse is where it’s at right now,” Fassel said. “You don’t have to buy a horse or own land to have that experience…the other big thing is getting boys involved. Over 90 percent of our clients are female.”
West said his family has been selling off parcels of land for years and is slowly paring down their regional horse business.
“The problem is areas with big stables and that kind of thing, the tax man cometh…if you’re not dealing with drought and lack of feed then it’s rising property taxes,” West said. “All the stables moved from agricultural to commercial some time ago and that also put a crimp on everybody…the progression around here has been just any other urban development…it just keeps growing.”
Jefferson County Horse Council president Terry Liekhus said at one time, Jefferson County had the largest concentration per-capita of horses in the entire state, but that has dropped, with Douglas County now at the top.
Like others, he agreed that horse-friendly zoning at the county level, horse access on almost all open space trails, a love of horses and issues that developers find unattractive — like some swaths of land being in a flood plain — have allowed areas like those along Indiana Street to resist development pressures.
He’s optimistic the horse culture will remain in semi-rural areas like west Arvada.
“It’s part of the heritage of the area — it’s always been a strength of the area,” Liekhus said. “Families have bonded over these activities for generations, and they still do.”
Michelle Beyer, owner of Fantasy Farm Saddlebreds at 11721 W. 52nd Ave., isn’t so sure. She’s seen the open fields around her home snapped up by developers the last five years, and sees the 2016 arrival of the Gold Line commuter stop blocks from her house as the death knell for agriculture in the area.
“There’s still people out there that love horses that don’t want to see their land used for condos and subdivisions — they’re like me and will only sell to a special person, someone who will keep the property for horses,” Beyer said. “Unfortunately, there’s not the case the majority of the time.”
Austin Briggs: 303-954-1729, abriggs@denverpost.com or twitter.com/abriggs
