Word: gunnison
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...cowboy ever began having this conversation. The Old West of ranchers, miners and loggers has been so alienated from the New West of environmentalists, recreationists and urban refugees that bridges between the camps usually get washed out. A culture clash still divides the rock-ribbed citizens of Gunnison, a sleepy city of 5,000 on Highway 50, and the flamboyant ex-hippies and ski bums of Crested Butte, the pastel Victorian resort town 26 miles to the north...
Ranchers, who value hard work and fortitude above all else, take the measure of their neighbors slowly, winter by winter. Trampe didn't fully accept Lohr until she joined him on the Upper Gunnison Water Conservancy Board, which is fighting a decade-long court battle to prevent the Denver suburbs from taking Gunnison's water. It wasn't Lohr's eloquence on the subject that broke Trampe's reserve. It was the way Lohr got to the water-board meetings. Since the only road to Lohr's cabin in Gothic was closed from October to June...
Stand in the field beside Trampe's house on a Sunday afternoon in April, and you'll see what's killing ranching. The sport utilities full of skiers fly past on the two-lane country road that leads from Crested Butte to Gunnison. From time to time, a car pulls over and people emerge to drink in the scene--the West Elk Wilderness rising white and jagged above a graceful slope known as Antelope Ridge. It's an astounding vista, and naturally some visitors decide to buy a piece of it, at $3,000 to $10,000 an acre...
...Trampe, one of three cash-poor ranchers who own most of the open land between Gunnison and Crested Butte, was not among those selling. "This is home," he says. In the field beside the brick house his father built sits a huge pile of stones, polished smooth by 100 winters, bleached white by 100 years of high-country sun. It was created by Trampe's grandfather, clearing this land for farming and cattle. When Trampe took over the ranch after his father's death 30 years ago, little had changed in the valley. As late as 1990, Trampe could...
...Lohr hatched their plan, mapping the valley from Gunnison to Crested Butte and pinpointing what was most at risk. Studying conservation easements, they hit on the idea of paying ranchers for development rights. "We said, 'These preservation tools are great, but we've got to find funding,'" Lohr recalls. "We had a million ideas and no money...