I am tempted to call this column "Pikes Peak—Whose Mountain is it Anyway, Part II?" In the July/August Timberlines, the historical relationship of the City of Colorado Springs to Pikes Peak was the subject. That relationship has not always produced the best in management strategies for the mountain at our doorstep. Damaged natural systems have resulted from many of the city’s activities on the Peak, a pattern only recently gaining widespread notice. For example, many of you may have heard the short commentary about Pikes Peak on National Public Radio in early July. Yet while the most visible controversy revolves around the city’s management of the Pikes Peak Highway and its relationship to the Pikes Peak auto hill climb, the broader issue is how local communities in the West such as Colorado Springs relate to the public lands from which they draw a significant measure of their sustenance, whether in the form of natural resources or tourist dollars.
As noted in my previous column, until recently, no one cared much about these things because local communities faced little or no competition for the "resources" provided by the lands outside their doors. As the West has been forced to accommodate what long-time residents view as externally-imposed value systems—manifested primarily in the form of federal environmental laws and regulations, but also in forces associated with national and global economies—the pattern which has developed is for western communities often to resist those forces and only relent under the pressure of imminent economic collapse or legal sanctions. In today’s era of victimization, the region as a whole thus becomes the greatest victim of all thereby allowing the hopeless romantics (and con men) at the core of the so-called Wise Use Movement to perpetuate in their rhetoric the false myth of western independence in opposition to what they view as assaults on the very values which underpin the history and traditions of the West.
Many western communities and individuals deeply resent the changes that have overtaken and continue to reshape the region. At the same time, they all too frequently almost prefer to revel in their victimhood rather than seize the opportunity to guide change to the betterment of both themselves and their communities. How many more stories do we have to read about unemployed Leadville miners, for example, who sit by waiting for the mines to reopen while their town is slowly overwhelmed and transformed into a bedroom community for Vail and other booming (and costly) Eagle Valley communities? How much more open space will be subdivided before rural ranching communities realize falling on the sword to preserve so-called western self-reliance is a losing battle?
We’re getting kind of far afield here, but the point is that in spite of the West’s historical propensity for bluster about self-reliance and independence, it has generally shown itself woefully incapable of solving its own problems, preferring instead to allow the federal government to intervene, however heavy-handedly or ineffectively. This, of course, allows the region to have it both ways: absolving itself of responsibility for solving its own problems while perpetuating the "West as victim" outlook.
The future of the West, as Ed Marston of High Country
News argues, will be determined by the extent to which westerners take control of
their own destiny. If there is in fact something truly unique about this region and its
people and communities worth preserving and protecting, the means by which this will occur
must emerge from within. The alternative is the slow slide down the slippery slope toward
the homogenization and sameness which has come to characterize much of the rest of our
country. The federal government has shown itself more than willing to "solve"
the region’s problems or clean up its mistakes when problems remain unresolved at the
local level. We could be heading in that direction on Pikes Peak, a development I find
regrettable because the problems on Pikes Peak can be addressed without such intervention.
Witnessing the helplessness with which the City of Colorado Springs approaches these
issues, while frustrating, thus is hardly surprising within the context of the history of
the West. Let’s hope we choose a different course.
by Rick Eckert 9/96
This was taken from the regularly featured column in the Timberlines Newsletter, published bimonthly by the Pikes Peak Chapter.
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Last updated February 12, 1999.