|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The best of G-Force |
HOQ Home |
Who We Are and Why We're Here |
Major Hollywood Celebs |
Movies |
Trivia |
When the TV is Off |
HOQ Store |
Voyager Synopses |
B5 Synopses |
Miscellany |
unnison perches on the edge of Colorado's Western Slope about
30 miles from the Continental Divide. The city itself sits on
the floor of the Gunnison Valley, 10 miles below the source of
the Gunnison River, at an elevation of 7,703 feet.
The guy who gave his name to all this was explorer John Gunnison, who passed through in 1853, on his way to his untimely demise at the hands of Utes near present-day Gunnison, Utah. Before Gunnison and his party got here, the region served as a summer home for the Tabeguache Utes, who were not stupid enough to live here year-round. Back before the weather got weird, we used to have a very pleasant, albeit brief, summer, and a long, snowy and cold winter. Gunnison, once known as "The Coldest Spot in the Nation," used to be on record 90 or so of every 365 days as having the lowest reported temperature in the continental U.S. These days we have extremely mild winters that turn into wet, snowy springs, followed by wet, rainy summers and a nice autumn.
The town of Gunnison got its start when Sylvester Richardson arrived in 1874 to found an agrarian colony. He did not know that Gunnison's growing season is only 56 days long. But this was back in the mining heyday, and Gunnison's salvation came as a supply town to the various mining communities that sprang up (including, notably for our readers, the town of Vulcan, founded in 1894 and withered by 1919). The most opulent building in town was La Veta Hotel, a three-story extravaganza that served free meals on any day the sun didn't shine. The hotel never had to pay up more than twice a year, and some years not at all.
The miners dabbled in silver and tried looking for gold, but that never really panned out (har). Coal turned out to be the mainstay, especially in the regions north of Gunnison, although a substantial deposit of lapis lazuli (a semi-precious blue gemstone) was found on Italian Mountain. The people brought in to do the mining were Slavs, Croatians and Italians, many of whom were more familiar with agriculture than mining. Eventually many of these people turned to cattle ranching as their vocation, and Gunnison became a ranching community. The Colorado Normal School, which eventually became Western State College, was founded in 1901, adding to the local economy.
Today Gunnison is fueled by tourism, Western State College, public land management and ranching, although it becomes harder every year for these family ranches to make a living, particularly when it's so much more lucrative to subdivide into 35-acre parcels that can then be sold to second-home owners.
Gunnison County is 85% publicly owned by the National Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. The city of Gunnison is 60 miles from the newly-appointed Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument (and about 30 miles from some spectacular river gorges), nine miles from the start of the state's largest reservoir, Blue Mesa, and 30 miles from Crested Butte, a destination ski resort featured in the Disney movie "Snowball Express" and the memorable made-for-TV movie "Snow Beast." We are also 60 miles from Lake City, infamous site of the demise of the traveling party Alferd Packer was accused in 1874 of murdering, then eating.
From Gunnison you are minutes away from excellent outdoor recreation opportunities, including rafting, fishing, hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, four-wheeling, camping, horseback riding, snowshoeing, snowmobiling and cross-country skiing (whenever it gets around to snowing). We also have a really cool archaeological site resting at the base of the mountain that boasts the largest collegiate letter in the world (at least, it used to be, if it still isn't).
Gunnison is 200 miles southwest of Denver, accessible via U.S. Highway 50 (over Monarch Pass from the east; Cerro Summit from the west), Colorado 114 over Cochetopa [Pass of the Buffalo], and, in the summer, over Kebler (that's Kebler, not Keebler--no Pass of the Elves, sorry) Pass from Colorado 133 into Crested Butte. We have a huge runway, accomodating 757s from Dallas (American Airlines) and Atlanta (Delta) during the ski season as well as commuter flights from Denver by United Express year-round.
The county's population is approximately 13,000, and about
7,000 of those live in Gunnison. The lucrative jobs (such as columnists
for G Force) are few and far between, but you can get $8/hour
working at McDonald's. The demand for homes by people from places
like Texas and California keeps driving up the local assessment,
although the situation is nowhere near as dire as it is in places
like Aspen and Vail, where the hired help must live more than
an hour from the town because of the wage/cost of living difference.
If you would like to know more about Gunnison and its environs, we recommend the Gunnison Country Chamber of Commerce, whose website is www.gunnison-co.com. Information on Western State College and the Tenderfoot Archaeological Site is available at www.western.edu.