Thank your for your kind remarks about my short essay. Unfortunately, it’s damn pithy for the plate you put out for us. The political-economy that underlies the neighborhood is troubling and I couldn’t do justice to like problems of land use and access – one of y(our) favorites, water rights, acid snow, public infrastructure and such. So let me hold what I have to say here close.

About the Marble quarry: yes, it’s at work, but it’s not a model for mining in the region.

I don’t think marble quarrying is a good comparison with other mining operations in the area, which concentrate on energy (coal, shale oil) or precious metals (molybdenum). Marble is rare, not only in the region, but globally: only Vermont and Italy have white(ish) Marble approaching Yule quality. If you want the pure white stuff with no off-color veins, there’s only one hole in the ground that has it.

But that operation currently only employs around 100 people, not like the thousands of the past, and there’s only so much of it. It will be gone someday, Rex won’t even discuss how much is left.

Other operations in the region could employ larger numbers but for the vicious side effects from destroyed wilderness, poison tailings and acid snow. AMAX could employ thousands for a molybdenum project in Gunnison County but you won’t find any of real estate agents or ranchers – or you! – asking for it.

Two more things: much of the current boom at the quarry is Yule for export thanks to a weak U.S. dollar. We can’t count on the Treasury supporting a weak dollar policy by choice, that leaves the region as vulnerable as it was to dependence on silver. Also, much of the stone cutting is for volume extraction, not for finished products. So in this sense it’s like logging hardwoods without furniture makers. The Italians protect the value of their marble by developing a cadre of professional stone cutters to increase the value-added and boost local employment. We don’t do that here, we leave it to the haphazard quality of local artisans who can’t really work on projects larger than kitchen counters.

As for the outdoor lifestyle economy in the area, it’s the critical mass and trickle-down from the foibles and fun of the uberrich that allow a “middle-class” to buy and speculate over average-priced valley homes exceeding six figures in the valley.

As a parent of college age kids I have to ask you: what level and kind of education will your children need to achieve before they can work and buy a house in the Valley? After how many years working somewhere else? And how many kids in Carbondale can say they were lucky to have a family like yours, what work are they going to do?

Personally, I couldn’t do it. I chose to overspecialize in my work to the point that I had to leave to be paid well for it. My cousin and his wife and new baby boy stayed and are making a go of it, but they live in a semi-feudal situation working a ranch. Despite ten years with his employer one bad day on the job could leave them commuting from a trailer park with meth lab neighbors to service jobs with no benefits. I worry for them, both selfishly and because I know too many young families in the area in similar straits.

The West Slope needs to do better.

IMO,

Jefferson

As for who we share our recreation wealth with, it might be mostly the uberrich if one is working a local such as Aspen. But overall there are thousands of middle class folks who use guidebooks and how-to books, read magazines (and blogs), watch movies, use the huts we found and volunteer for, and even hire guides. So I think my point is valid about what us mountain folk can do that’s more than self gratification.

First, congratulations on getting a kid out the door to college.

You and the new film poke us: did Colorado’s old economy founded on mineral wealth inevitably lead us to the “pinecone economy” of today?

Well, yes and no. Mining collapsed more dramatically in some places than others, it continues alongside tourism in some places (like Gunnison County) whereas in others (like Pitkin) it is effectively dead. Where it collapsed completely, the unionized work, communities of solidarity and eventually the people left as well.

It took most of the 20th century for that to happen in your neighborhood where the explosive growth has been fueled by cheap gasoline and airline deregulation. Lots of people from somewhere else can afford to put up a third or fourth home in Aspen and a whole foodchain of work supporting the recreation lifestyle follows in their wake. It does indeed work for people who are not looking far beyond tomorrow’s mogul run for meaning, but it is not family friendly.

And it is indeed built on shaky foundations. The rising costs of fuel undermine an economy based upon easy access and using personal transportation.
A real estate market geared towards pleasing the cream of planet makes it difficult for born and raised locals to buy a house over their heads without selling the land they inherited from under their feet. And nobody can make up their mind whether there are too many migrant laborers or not enough. Mexicans drinking on their stoops – people used to complain about the Italians and Slovenians doing the same thing a century back – make some folks uncomfortable, but who’s going to build the houses, do the landscaping and run the restaurant kitchens?

So if the rising global demand for oil undoes this economy the way falling demand for silver killed the old one, what’s left? The new internet infrastructure holds out hope that mountain kids might do something other than share their favorite trails with the überrich, but what? There are knowledge economy workers in the area – I used to be one of them – but they only fill artisanal niches, not agglomerating into economies of scale like the think tanks found in the Front Range or the Wasatch.

So enjoy the film and think about the resonance of the mountain past you find in the present. But be prepared to find more than nostalgia in the mining legacy. The ghosts of the old houses are telling us something: if you stay here you need to do something else.

IMO,

Jefferson

I’ll check out the Udall article, Randy is friend so I can always give him a call if I need more exposition. Might make a good blog. So thanks for the heads up Camp.

Sounds like that could replace second homes too….