PARADISE LOST:
The Story of One Small Colorado Town
When my wife Judy and I moved to Old Town in November 1997, up the road from us was a small junkyard and an old wooden sign which read "Welcome to Old Town." Since then, they've taken the sign down, and they're turning Old Town into a junkyard of condos and shopping centers.
I used to be able to walk up to where West Coal Creek forked off towards Marshall Road to the right and open space to the left and see an abandoned house. Next to the abandoned house were an empty trailer home and an old barn.
It's hard for me to believe that over 100 houses comprising the Sagamore development now stand in this same field. I imagine some of the people who live in Sagamore command a good view of the mountains, but they've ruined it for the rest of us.
To the south, Key Co. has built offices on a hill they're calling Superior Pointe. To the East, they've built a Total and a shopping center is to follow, to say nothing about what's going on up and down McCaslin Boulevard, in and around Rock Creek, across the highway in Louisville, or just up 128 in and about Interlocken.
As I write this, I can hear the trucks driving up and down West Coal Creek and the sound of a jackhammer across the street. I can look out my window and see the cranes and bulldozers at work.
When we first moved here, I suggested to Judy that we take pictures of Old Town. It was a funky little town. Nothing to it but a few houses built on what was once a coal-mining camp. No municipal buildings save a quaint little Town Hall; no businesses save Conoco and Bruno's Pizza. If we had had any idea of the enormous changes which were to be wrought in Old Town in such a short time, I would have insisted that we made a photographic record of the destruction of Old Town. Instead I offer up these words.
I remember when I could look across the street and see cows and horses grazing. No more. The guy who owned the cows and horses had his property condemned, and now he and they are gone. It was a doubly dirty deal because a few years ago when Old Town wanted to incorporate, they needed to include this man's land to get the deal done. So the man allowed Old Town to "incorporate" his land. Then they thank him by condemning his property and kicking him out.
The King Souper's on South Boulder in Louisville stands upon the site of a miners' insurrection. A couple of miners were shot and killed there. I can't believe there's no plaque commemorating this event and the brave men who died there.
The man with the cows and the horses wasn't the only one to have his property condemned. On the site where the Costco now stands, an elderly couple once had their home. They had lived there a good long time. The woman is in her nineties and blind. Their property was condemned so Costco could be built. These elderly people were paid some ridiculous sum ($20,000 comes to mind) and sent off to a nursing home in Colorado Springs. The man died not long afterwards and is buried in Louisville. I think he died of a broken heart. I think he would still be alive if they hadn't done what they did. There should be a plaque in this man's honor at the Costco because I think this man died so the Costco could be built.
And it's not just people dying so that Old Town might be swallowed up in the suburban sprawl, but it's animals and plants and, yes, the earth itself, which is dying so that the Costco can be built. I know some Coloradoans don't get it. They're hauling tail up the old highway into Boulder because wherever it is they've got to be in such a hurry is more important to them than taking the time to enjoy the drive and one of the most magnificent views this country has to offer. I know some people will point to the new Land Rover dealership and say that used to be a vacant field as though that's something to be proud of.
I know some people are so spoiled with the abundance of wildlife Colorado still offers that they take prairie dogs, coyotes, and eagles for granted. But if you've lived out East where they destroyed the land and killed off the animals long ago, maybe you wouldn't take wild animals for granted.
That's the true tragedy of what's happening today in Colorado. We've all but ruined the East. You would have thought we would have learned something, but no, we're going to go ahead and ruin the West as well. Make no mistake about it--the New Gold Rush is on, and just like the first one, nothing matters but the money. And seeing as how we killed off essentially all the Native Americans the first go-around, this time we'll settle for destroying whatever animals and natural beauty is left. We won't be happy, apparently, until there's a McDonald's on every corner.
When I was fifteen, my family moved to the Upper East Side of New York. We lived on the nineteenth floor and had a beautiful view downtown since south of us was a vacant lot. In the time we were there, they built another skyscraper on that vacant lot, and our beautiful view was replaced by drawn blinds.
Living in Asheville, North Carolina, prior to coming to Old Town, I worked at the Asheville Mall. Disgusted with the rampant consumerism I had to endure as part of my job, during my lunch break, I took relief in walking to the edge of the parking lot and looking at the mountains. Within a year, they had built a second mall on the next mountain over and ruined my lunch.
There are similar incidents I could relate from other places I have lived. But nothing could prepare the citizens of Old Town, including myself, for the wholesale holocaust upon Nature that we are now witnessing. The other night on my evening walk I passed by a group of longtime residents who stood, as if in shock, staring at the enormous mounds of dirt dug up to lay the pipes for what will be the new shopping center. I'm new here, and I'm hurting. I can only imagine what these people feel. None of us wanted this. A petition circulated in Old Town over a year ago, signed by essentially every resident of Old Town and handed to the Mayor. The petition said we did not want the construction. We didn't want the condos, and we didn't want the shopping centers. So much for democracy.
They're turning the Old Town/Louisville exit into the next Mousetrap. They're turning our neighborhood into the next Westminster Mall. Right now we're living in a dust bowl because of all the digging. Dirt comes in through my window on the wind. All you smell around here is dirt. Who knows how many animals they've killed and dislocated? Who knows how many hearts they've broken? They say they've doing this to improve our quality of life. Building condos and malls we don't want to improve our quality of life. Right.
There's nothing they're building that Judy and I patronize or are going to patronize. Not here in Old Town or across the highway in Louisville. It's not so much we're boycotting per se. They're not building any place we'd go to anyway.
The only thing they've built in Boulder County this past year that I can use is the Lafayette Public Library. Those of you who have been there know what a wonderful place it is. Yes, I admit, I'd prefer to have the Lafayette Public Library to a vacant field. But for the rest of it? Costco, Sam's Club and the rest? I'd rather have a vacant field.
Yesterday I drove by Rock Creek. I saw a golden eagle perched on telephone wires looking down at men laying the foundation for yet another edifice. The eagle moved his head about quizzically. You could almost hear him say, "What the hell is going on here?" They say that all this construction has no effect on the wildlife. That raccoons, rabbits, and eagles can live in harmony with man amid suburban sprawl. I'm not buying it. Homeless animals pass through Old Town all the time these days. Transient rabbits hop about the alley. A fox and her two kits seek sanctuary in the junkyard. Mother skunk with six babies fighting to get at her teats is moving up the road.
One night, our cat Nadine was chasing a mouse in the yard. I don't know if it was a Prebble's mouse, but I've never seen a mouse like this one. It was jumping around like a man afire. I grabbed Nadine and took her back in the house. Later I found out, had it in fact been a Prebble's Mouse, and had Nadine done the thing cats do, I could be in federal prison right now. But you know I wasn't the one to destroy that mouse's home.
I used to be able to cross a vacant field to get the bus. Occasionally, the man whose property they condemned grazed his cattle and horses there, but for the most part it was home for a colony of prairie dogs. I knew it would only be a matter of time before they got to these guys, and I knew they weren't going to be relocated. I considered picketing and/or alerting the media when the time came. I went to see my sister in San Francisco last August. With the cunning Big Business is known for, they poisoned the prairie dogs when their lone champion was out of town. When I got back, the vacant field was torn up to make way for the shopping center, and the prairie dogs were dead. I'm sorry, guys. I let you down.
In On the Road, Jack Kerouac has a passage about coming out West and meeting an old man who embodied the Spirit of the West and how this old man laughed with a laughter which rang out through the mountains and across the prairies. Well, that Old Man of the West isn't laughing anymore. He's crying as he watches them destroy everything that made the West special and beautiful. And those of us not blinded by greed, those of us who haven't sold our souls to cash in, are crying, too.
When I was young and living back East, I read in my history books how the white man came out and killed the Indians and killed the buffalo. I wondered how such things could happen. How can people do these things to other people and to animals and Nature? Now that I've been out here and seen the destruction of Old Town with my own eyes, I don't wonder about these things anymore. The people who killed the Native Americans and stole their land are the same ones building the condos and the malls.
My father is a Methodist minister, and he taught me to hate the sin but love the sinner. I always try to keep that in mind, but sometimes I can't help it. I hate the construction workers. I hate the tractor drivers and the bulldozer operators. I hate the guy with the jackhammer. I hate the carpenters and the electricians. I hate the guys driving the dump trucks and the concrete mixers. I hate the skyscrapers.
I know a man's got to live, and I don't begrudge him that right. But does a man have to destroy the environment to live? Can we live if we destroy the environment? Let me make that more specific: can we live if we destroy the town in which we live? Or, allowing we would survive, would we want to live?
I have something to say to the Mayor of Old Town (who is on the board of the Old Town Development Corp, i.e., the fox is in charge of the hen house) and all the others mortgaging the future of Colorado to make a quick buck, and, that is, "No, I don't want to live in your goddam mall. That's not why I came West--to live in your goddam mall. If I wanted to live in a goddam mall, then I would've stayed back East."
Excuse me if I sound melodramatic, but maybe if you got off your computer long enough, or maybe if you stopped watching TV long enough, or maybe if you got off your cell phone long enough, you could look out the window and see for yourself.
Paradise is lost. The Colorado you knew is gone. The land the white man took from the Native Americans and trashed is now being taken from us by Corporate America and trashed. The West is joining the East in one endless suburban sprawl. They're cleaning up Rocky Flats, and before you know it, people are going to be living at Rocky Flats Pointe and they're going to be shopping at Rocky Flats Mall. The Rocky Mountain National Park is going to become like Central Park in New York: an oasis of green surrounded by McDonald's and Wal-Marts.
If you love Colorado, leave.
You can stay and protest and get yourself thrown in jail, but you can't stop them. So leave.
Better to live in the trashed-out East or trashed-out California. There it's a done deal, so you can sleep at night. But how can you live with yourself, if you love Colorado, knowing that you were here, and just by virtue of living here, participated in mankind's expulsion from Paradise?
I'm from the East. I can live in a post-Edenic world. But to come here to Colorado and get a taste of Paradise before seeing them turn Heaven into Hell, no, I don't want to be here for that. Because what it means is that we trashed the East, and we killed the buffalo, and we still haven't learned our lesson. It means the Utes and the Arapahos and the Cheyenne died in vain.
You can't blame Eve 'cause you're the one eating the apple. You're the one shopping at King Souper's and Costco. You're the one who doesn't care how many animals, or even people, have died. All you care about is your portfolio. You're the one holding hands with the Devil. And make no mistake about it: the Devil is Corporate America.