Last month I drove from Salt Lake City to Vail Colorado mostly on two lane highways - US 40, CO 131, CO 13 and CO 64. I couldn’t avoid a few miles on I-80 and I-70, but the rest of my mileage was on quiet roads through empty white range land or over remote, and sometimes scary, mountain passes. continued below….
Except for the resort city of Steamboat Springs, the towns I drove through were rural, ranch, oil-producing and sometimes almost empty. Vernal and Rangely had been riding high, until the energy boom went bust. Phippsburg and Oak Creek look like time had stopped for fifty years. The hamlet of Dinosaur was largely vacant, with only a couple stores still open and some of the saddest motels anywhere. Craig is surviving on coal and a coal-fired power plant.
In most towns, there was evidence of a past life that has disappeared. Empty and abandoned houses, boarded up stores, log cabins unoccupied for many decades. I saw mile after mile of snow-covered pasture that went all the way to the horizon. Wind-whipped whiteouts with blue sky overhead. A road sign that said “No Services for 42 miles”.
It was good to see that over-population and uncontrolled development haven’t spread everywhere in the West.