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LA VETA 鈥� Around 10,000 visitors were expected in La Veta last Saturday to attend an arts festival, a music festival and an Independence Day parade.

For the town of about 800 people west of Walsenburg, the week of July Fourth is make or break. This year, a wildfire unlike any the region has seen, ruined the best-laid plans.

“All of our business comes in the summer,” lamented Nanda Ranes, owner of the Corners Diner in La Veta. “I’m completely distraught about the whole thing.”

Instead of tourists, hundreds of firefighters set up camp in the town to battle the Spring Creek fire, which has burned more than 107,000 acres, 聽largest in history.

The airfield, on a high bluff above the town, didn’t host 2,000 concertgoers listening to country music at the Spanish Peaks Music Festival. Instead, the rhythmic whir of helicopter blades and the sloshing of their buckets dipping into big tubs filled with slurry filled the air.

Only a handful of people milled around Main Street on Saturday afternoon, an eerie quiet that left business owners uncertain of what the future would hold. The blue skies seemed far removed from the smoke-filled ones earlier that week.

Initially, residents worried that the fire cresting the nearby mountains would sweep down and destroy the community first settled during the Civil War. Then they worried about whether Cuchara and the surrounding vacation homes would survive. They did.

They now worry what recovery looks like, and who will make it through the winter.

“It was like we were standing at the gates of hell,” said La Veta Mayor Doug Brgoch of the night of June 28. Crews had lost their fight to contain the fire in the trees on the slopes above the town. Flames looked ready to roll down and claim everything.

“They told us they don’t fight fires from the front,” Brgoch said. “They then told us we will make a frontal assault.”

Hot shot crews dove in, aircraft dropped slurry and firefighters on the ground back burned the grass and brush.聽“They saved La Veta,” Brgoch said.

But like cattle with no grass to graze on, the fire may not have destroyed the town, but it did leave it vulnerable to economic starvation, a problem that gets fewer headlines and more limited government resources.

“This town runs on sales tax,” Brogch said, noting property taxes only contribute $47,000 in local revenues. A quarter of the gross sales tax revenues collected in the town come in July alone, and those look to be down 75 percent.

Hotel rooms are cancelled all the way until October. Some restaurants up the valley lost power, and had their food stores spoiled. Charlie’s Market got stuck with 400 pounds of ice for a wedding that was cancelled. Tourists, with good cause, stayed away.

Lieutenant Governor Donna Lynne visited La Veta on Friday to tour firefighting and relief efforts and to see where the state could help. She highlighted a new $200,000 micro-loan program available through the Colorado Office of Economic Development to help distressed businesses remain open.

“We will help them find resources,” promised Irv Halter, executive director of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, who accompanied Lynne.

But Halter notes recovery is a long process. Five years on, communities impacted by the massive flooding of 2013 along the northern Front Range are still recovering.

Vanessa Coca, an operator at The Salon on Main Street, said the self-employed and small business owners don’t need a loan, which they may or may not be able to repay.

What they need are customers. And aside from pleading with northern Front Range residents to make the trek, she doesn’t know where they will come from.

The Spanish Peak Music Festival paid $96,000 in advance to retain acts like Jerrod Neiman, Bri Bragwell and Charley Jenkins, said Jim VanLue, a co-promoter of the event along with Terry Carmichael.

The musicians were understanding about the last-minute cancellation, but they don’t give refunds, he said.

VanLue said his hope is the festival can move to a date in September. But coordinating performers’ schedules will be a challenge. And then there are the 2,000 tickets that were sold.

Unlike the mountain resorts in northern Colorado that have found a way to balance summer and winter tourism, most of the tourist dollars flowing into this part of the state come in a narrow window between June and August.

Huerfano County, long plagued by some of the highest unemployment and poverty rates in Colorado, doesn’t offer many options to those looking to make a living, so losing tourist visits is a big deal.

Ranes, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., wanted to return home to La Veta, but quickly realized if he was to find a job, he would need to create one.

“This is a poor area. It was poor since I was a kid and that hasn’t changed. Our economy is crap. But we live here because we love it,” Ranes said.

With the help of his family, he bought and remodeled a diner and put his cooking skills to use. But for his business to make it, he needs tourists. And he needs to make enough in July to get him through the slow months.

“We might gripe about those Texans being uppity, but they are our bread and butter,” Ranes said.

Emlie Dubia, owner of the La Veta Mercantile,聽recently moved to La Veta to recapture what Salida lost after it became trendy.

She bought a building and created a gathering space where the community can hear musicians, buy the work of local artists or grab a beer or a glass of wine.

As a newcomer, Dubia acknowledges she doesn’t know what the lost week might have meant for her sales. She did lose a reservation for a steak dinner for 100 members of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association later this month.

Her store empty on Saturday, she stared out the window briefly, imaging what big crowds might look like going up and down Main Street, and then came back to finish her thoughts.

“We will be OK,” she said.

There is the Spanish Peaks Celtic Festival starting on Sept. 16, the town’s Octoberfest on Oct. 6, with its vintage car show and 5K run. And there is always next year.

While this summer may be a loss, businesses that can find a way to get through the lean winter face a market that is on the rise, said聽Cynamin VanLue, a Realtor at Code of the West Real Estate.

More homebuyers from Denver and Colorado Springs have discovered the area, long a vacation haunt for Texans and Oklahomans. They used to account for about a fifth of home sales but represent closer to half this year.

Most aren’t looking for second homes, but a retirement haven in the mountains of southern Colorado, where the winters are milder, the pace of life slower and properties more affordable than the resort towns to the north, she said.

Home prices in Denver have appreciated enough to allow someone to make an even swap, or depending on where they live, even pocket some extra money. Having more permanent residents will create a stronger base for the economy year-round.

“We had a very strong market prior to the fire,” she said. Her hope is that won’t change.

In the aggregate, tourism spending in Colorado probably won’t decline much his year, even with all the fires burning across the state and the unprecedented closure of the San Juan National Forest.

Tourism spending in the state still rose in 2012, a devastating year in terms of homes and lives lost due to fires.

One reason is that people shift their spending to areas not impacted by fires. And while Colorado may be known for its mountains, about half of the tourist dollars are spent in metro Denver, with a significant share in Colorado Springs.

Leon Aliski, project manager at Dean Runyan Associates, a firm that tracks state tourism spending including in Colorado, conducted a study of what impacts a severe fire season had in Oregon in 2017.

Tourism spending in the state grew roughly 4.5 percent last season. “Without the fires, it would have been an additional 2 percent,” he said. There is no reason why Colorado shouldn’t see another record year in tourism spending.

But zero down to the local level in places like Silverton and La Veta, where those losses are acutely felt and where there are few alternatives to replace the lost income, and the wildfires will prove devastating.

La Veta town trustee Tim Tady acknowledges that suffering a wildfire brands a community with a scar the whole world can see. But the town and the scenery around La Veta were largely spared.

“Fire is a stigma,” he said. “We hope people will understand and come back through.”