Colorado College | Bulletin

Change may be inevitable, but in the Rocky Mountain West – growing in population at three times the rate of the nation as a whole – it has become a way of life.

The first State of the Rockies Conference, held at Colorado College on May 3 and 4, took a closer look at what happens when one of the most spectacular and fragile regions in the nation is buffeted by major changes, among them the stresses of huge population growth; ranch lands being sliced up into subdivisions; income levels becoming widely disparate; and employment levels shifting.

Betsy Marston, former editor of High Country News, shares her observations of the Rockies based on her many years in the region.

Attendees heard lectures on the sovereignty and endurance of Indian nations, the future of the Rockies from an ecological perspective, and views on the massive changes the region has undergone in the past 20 years. Former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm spoke on “The Angry West, Revisited,” looking back through the years since he wrote his 1982 book “The Angry West: A Vulnerable Land and Its Future.”.

At the conference, Professor Walt Hecox ’64, project director, and F. Patrick Holmes ’03, program coordinator, unveiled the centerpiece of the project: the first State of the Rockies Report Card. The report is a 63-page, comprehensive yet accessible statement on what is happening in the eight Rocky Mountain states: Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

The report ranks the top counties in the region in
key indicator categories:

Subdivisions and Ranchettes in the Rockies
The Rocky Mountain Playground
The Jewels of the Rockies
Native-Born or “Cappuccino Cowboy”
Managing Immigration
Civic Engagement
Healthy Places to Live and Work
Education Attainment
Arts, Culture, and Employment in the “Creative Class”
The Graying of the Rockies
A Good Place to Raise Kids
Balanced Employment
Small-Business Vitality
Growth in Earnings
Balanced Income Distribution
Distressed Counties

In addition, the report includes an overall report-card “grading” of the most livable places in the Rockies based on a composite ranking of indicators including employment distribution, natural amenities, poverty rate, education levels, income distribution, unemployment rate, real growth in average earnings per job, total employment growth, and small-business growth. All 280 counties in the region were graded, receiving an A+ through F- grade.

The grades raised the esteem and the ire of counties throughout the region, as evidenced in news headlines that followed the report’s release: “Gallatin County ‘best place’ in Rockies”; “Valley scores low on living test”; “Job base balance in Flathead County”; “Report ranks Santa Fe top arts area in Rockies.” Editorials both refuted (“Pueblo’s livability good”) and praised the work (“We applaud the college for producing what has to be one of the most valuable reference works on this broad and daunting subject”). News coverage appeared in major media including the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Albuquerque Journal, and community papers such as the Coeur d’Alene (Idaho) Press, as well as on Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio, and television news.

President Celeste (above) introduces keynote speaker Richard D. Lamm, former governor of Colorado. Lamm (below), currently co-director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies at the University of Denver, spoke about "The Angry West, Revisited."

Photos by Tom Kimmell

Lending additional perspective to these aspects of the Rockies were lectures and presentations by:

Jill S. Baron, an ecosystem ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and senior research ecologist with the National Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University

Betsy and Ed Marston, former editor and publisher, respectively, of the environmental newspaper High Country News

George Sibley, writer, teacher, and coordinator of Western State College’s annual Headwaters Conference, Water Workshop, and Environmental Symposium

Thomas D. Sisk, professor and ecologist with the Center for Environmental Sciences and Education at Northern Arizona University

Charles Wilkinson, law professor at University of Colorado-Boulder, and expert on law, history, and society in the American West

Ellen R. Stein ’87, first executive director of the Mountain Studies Institute in Silverton, Colo., and first executive director of the Community Agriculture Alliance in Steamboat Springs, Colo.

The conference and report, to be offered annually, build upon Colorado College’s 130 years as an institution of higher education in the Rocky Mountains. The project, an initiative of President Richard F. Celeste’s action agenda, is an outreach that leverages the college’s solid background of teaching, research, and publication on the Rockies.

Colorado College can provide an independent, private perspective on challenges and changes in the region. By pulling together information on every county in the Rocky Mountain region and providing the perspectives of many of the West’s brightest minds via challenge essays and lectures, Hecox and Holmes hope the State of the Rockies Project will give community, government, and business leaders the tools and the forum necessary to use collaborative interregional approaches to solving difficult local problems.

“The Rockies Project is designed to provide a private liberal arts voice in regional issues, offer credible research on problems, and convene citizens and experts to discuss the future of this region so vital to the essence of Colorado College,” Hecox said. “Our first venture has shown a surprisingly deep and broad regional thirst for information and discussion on the region. We expect that will only grow with future report cards and conferences, which will repeat some basic features of the 2004 effort while also tackling new regional concerns and successes.”

The 2004 State of the Rockies Report Card can be viewed online at www.ColoradoCollege.edu/stateoftherockies. Printed copies of the report ($12 plus postage/handling) may be purchased via that link or by calling the CC Bookstore, (719) 389-6391.