Gentrifying a Mountain Paradise

By J.D. Reed

"It's about the most beautiful place on the planet," says a new resident, Megatrends Author John Naisbitt. When Bicycle Fortune Heir Richard Schwinn moved in eight years ago, he recalls, "it was like paradise." But perhaps not for much longer. Laid-back little Telluride, Colo., remote hideout for a smattering of the trendy rich and uncrowded preserve of ski connoisseurs, seems about to be discovered. The hills are alive with the sound of condo construction; resort developers are poised on their bulldozers. And a big part of the reason is that the hippies who crash-landed there in the '70s have changed. Says Durfee Day, who arrived in 1969: "Basically the whole town turned 40."

Telluride's unique ambience and special magic are set picturesquely at the & end of State Highway 145 in a box canyon some 350 difficult miles and a couple of decades southwest of Denver. But the onetime rip-roaring mining town in the San Juan Mountains has never quite been a backwater. Butch Cassidy came by to rob one of its banks, and William Jennings Bryan stopped off to say a few words. The local mines used to yield gold, silver and other precious metals, but the last of the major ones closed in 1978.

The population had dwindled from 5,000 in the 1880s to 500 in the late 1960s, when political activists and dropouts looking for a Rocky Mountain high started moving in. Native Elvira Wunderlich, 70, remembers the hippies as "just a bunch of trust funders and freeloaders." But the newcomers brought along their political savvy and quickly commandeered the town council from the locals, known as the elks (because of their frequent meetings at the Elks Club). Says former Mayor Jerry Rosenfeld, 44, a Denver dropout from the Eugene McCarthy campaign: "We were going to build a utopia here."

While the elks seethed, the hippies did their thing. They restored many of the Victorian jewel-box buildings (the entire town was named a national historic district in 1963) and established tough, low-growth zoning codes. Fifteen summer festivals, including one for mushrooms, sprang up; the eleven- year-old Telluride film festival is one of the most respected in the U.S. Radio station KOTO still plays the marching music. "Some days you can hear 6 1/2 hours of Bob Dylan," says Actress Susan Saint James, who came for the film festival and decided to buy a house five years ago. "It's like a time warp." Ever since the first ski trails and lifts were built in 1972, developers have eyed the town's secret chic for a major resort. In 1979 Telluride Ski Corp. (Telco) announced upscale Mountain Village: 92 acres of residences, hotels, a golf course and new intermediate runs, necessary to attract family-oriented baby boomers. The whole operation was to be built six miles and a mountainside away from Telluride, linked to the town by a high- speed European-style gondola.

A good solution, it might seem, for preservation-prone Telluridians who wanted to protect the town's character. By now, though, the hippies who stayed on had turned into the "ten-year club." They had roots, even investments in more than the odd piece of real estate. Telco proposed to add four new lifts on its side of the mountain, and only two, eventually, on the town side. Says David Fruen, owner of the Rose Victorian food mart and a onetime Minnesota insurance agent: "We feared all the investment would be sucked out of town to the other side of the mountain."

The former hippies, now in common cause with the elks, dusted off their activist tactics. Led by Walter McClennan, who arrived from Cleveland in 1971 and bought the downtown New Sheridan Hotel, they sued early and often, forcing Telco into a compromise. It is building the two lifts for the town now. Says Clothing Store Owner Terry Tice: "You don't have to roll over and let developers do whatever they want to."

Instead, everyone has development fever. In the bar of the Senate Restaurant, there is as much talk about financing condos as about ski bindings. Some $15 million worth of real estate has already been sold at Mountain Village. Last spring voters actually okayed putting up $1 million toward a small new airport. "The pendulum has swung the other way," says Attorney Bob Korn, 43, who was once busted in Telluride on a marijuana charge. "We have kids and mortgages now. We're just like our dads were."

When a hot-trend mass hits local cool over snowy peaks, naturally the forecast is for a storm of further quichification. Petti di pollo alla Bolognese has long since overtaken steak 'n' eggs on the menu at Julian's restaurant. The old opera house, where locals say Sarah Bernhardt performed, now includes a "conference center," and Tom Kaster, 60, a former Chicago stagehand, is Telluride's first parking-control officer. Complains one saddened resident: "We gave him a badge and created a monster." Whether magic Telluride can avoid creating a similar fate in the face of a trendies invasion is still very much up in the for now still clear mountain air.

With reporting by Robert C. Wurmstedt/Telluride