This Land is My Land

Colorado struggles to reconcile its culture of independence with rapid growth

“Sittin on a pocket full of hard earned wages,

lookin at the world through magazine pages,

I’ve heard a lot about the mountains

and the colorado range.

Need a little time to start some livin’ ”

Jimmy Buffett, “A Mile High in Denver,” 1970

I met Bruce, a taxi driver from Long Island who moved to Denver in 1973. When he picked me up It was dark and late, but he kept his Yankees cap pulled down just above his eyes while we drove East on 36. He grew up in Levittown, the first planned community in the United States, the ur-suburb for everything outside the window of our CRV. We drive through the extended sprawl of the Denver-Boulder corridor, condensation from our breath collects on the glass and renders the glowing Netflix living rooms of Louisville in soft bokeh. “Louisville was a poke-n-plumb town when I got here, poke your head out the car window and you were already plumb out of town.” “See this part?” He points to the new First Bank Center residential development. “This was all black at night. You’d be driving from Boulder and once you got past McCaslin it was just nothing till’ Commerce City.” When we arrive at my house he pulls over and removes his phone from its dash-mounted cradle. We’re on Google Earth now and i’m transfixed on Bruce’s memories, the sweep of history and its full circle, the story told by the satellite. He does a precise flick with his finger on the touch screen, sending the God’s Eye View careening from Colorado to the East Coast. We’re now levitating over Bruce’s old home while parked outside of mine. I crane my neck to get a better look at his phone. “My Dad told me about how Long Island used to be a little like Britain, with little forests and fields separating hamlets from each other. Stuff like that. I was too young to see the change, but i’ve gotten to see it here in Denver, how it all starts to fill in. Crazy.” I shook his hand and stepped out of the car.

Colorado still maintains a firm grasp on the imagination of woodbe frontiersman, those trying to escape the muggy sprawl of the Midwest, Texans and the perennial exodus of economic and lifestyle refugees out of California. As a young man from Kansas put it when I asked why he moved to Denver, it’s “because the mountains are calling, bro.”

Google’s Trends service aggregates search terms by subregion. According to Trends, no other state in the country is more associated with the search term “nature,” than Colorado. The state also tops rankings for another search query, “open space.” People come to Colorado for the mountains, but they also come here to be left alone. By itself, the Denver metro area has grown fourfold since the release of Buffett’s folk rock tune in 1970. Colorado is now a contradiction. Or perhaps a victim of its own success. The draw of “nature,” a magnet for Americans in search of a frictionless playground, steadily eats away at the “open space” that existing residents value. All the fanfare has brought a decades long wagon train, transforming the provincial backdrop of the front range into a ribbon of footloose development.

A private model of citizenship isn’t new to the state either. The earliest American settlers were drawn to austere mining operations with the hope of striking it rich. Boulder steadily gained cache through the 1960’s and 70’s as a nascent new-amsterdam and refuge for itinerant free thinkers like Allen Ginsberg. TABOR, the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, established Colorado as a paragon of radical libertarian policy in 1992. What’s been exposed in recent years is the impossibility of sustaining a culture of privatism amidst rapid growth. Density demands cooperation, in theory.

Nowhere is this contradiction more evident — the incompatibility of individualism and growth — than on the freeways that bisect the state. We may love the mountains, but we like our ruggedized vehicles even more. There’s nearly a car for every man, woman, and child according to recent estimates. Colorado also has the second highest rate of fatal road rage in the country and yet rankings of congestion don’t even put the Denver metro in the top ten. Violence in response to otherwise unremarkable traffic illuminates a darker, unexplored dimension to the frontier psyche. The ethos of the private citizen, secure in his SUV, awkwardly confronts a reality in which thousands of others just like him desperately attempt to shove themselves down a concrete artery. Such is the freeway psychodrama of Mad Maxian Jeep Rubicons, styled like bug out vehicles for Doomsday preppers, darting Subaru’s of the type-a local, or the survivalist-chic 4Runners, who will, so help me god, risk a multi-car pile up to get fresh tracks on Palavicini. In the harried rush to assert their dominance on the road, many will find themselves in a standing wave of traffic, emasculated. Social scientists would call this a collective action problem: a catch-22 where a prevailing desire to “go it alone” infringes on the ability of anybody to do so. Pressure ratchets up with each new transplant vying to express a rugged individualism onto shrinking space.  

In spite of these obvious frustrations, Colorado voters made it known in 2018 that they would not be paying for education, infrastructure, or transportation. In short, a rejection of civic spirit and collective responsibility at the very moment when it’s needed most. And in the vacuum where public policy should be, a strange cultural conflict has taken hold instead -- not unlike the nation's capital. Instead of hiring teachers, building out Light Rail, or expanding RTD to the exurban hinterlands, many residents have decided to take matters into their own hands. Welcome to politics via adhesive sticker.

Flagwashing and Colorado Nativism

Above Image: A transplant attempting to insinuate themselves into Colorado culture by mimesis

If you’ve lived in Colorado for more than a few years, you’ve probably noticed the conspicuous rise of a certain bumper sticker. Typically it consists of the word “NATIVE” in bold typeface on a pastiche of the state’s license plate. Other variations use the same template, but exchange “Native” for the more combative, “Get Your Weed and Leave.” Symbolic responses from non-natives range from the genial, if pleading, “Not a Native… but I got here as fast as I could,” to a nearly clownish embrace of the state flag. By appropriating the symbolism of the mountains, the flag (i.e.“flagwashing”), and the right set of local past times, transplants hope to justify their presence, or claim to Colorado, through public displays of lifestyle affinity. Nativists cling to the equally absurd premise that if transplants can be made to feel unwelcome enough, the cranes will disappear and we can finally get back to driving I-70 on a Saturday. Both tendencies, the exclusionary and the wheedling, are the stubborn residue of a local culture that shrinks away from tough questions. Passive aggressive posturing is unlikely to resolve the fundamental dilemma of how we house, transport and educate ourselves.

Still, It’s understandably hard to escape the romance of groovy wellness regimens and the kind of hardscrabble cool that comes with braving the wilderness. That’s part of our DNA here. Unfortunately we’ve stopped to smell the roses so long we forgot to water them. The same aesthetic that translates so well to Instagram: the bearded man nestled in a Tepui tent with his dog, Kundalini yoga instructors hashtagging the sublime, just as soon curtles into a pathology of self-serving privatism. Taking a step back from the mania to self actualize, we might find that the best way to preserve the soul of the state is to be its steward.

Considering that during the last midterm, upwards of 40% of voters cast their ballots in favor of public goods, I’m optimistic. There’s a growing constituency for change. The solution will have to come from long time residents who are prepared to redefine what being a Coloradan means; because outdoor recreation, legal weed, yoga, and craft beer aren’t sufficient foundations for a community, they’re lifestyle preferences. Which is also to say that “natives” need to ask more of themselves before they can ask anything of newcomers. Being a Coloradan should start with being invested in your community and the future of your state. When we delink our state identity from political responsibility, we risk a future of traffic jams and shitty schools to be sure, but we also risk conflating the marketers fantasy of frontier abundance with the reality of living here. In other words, the reality of living with each other.

* Header photo: NASA LANDSAT image of Denver Metropolitan Area, 1999

* Population Graph: From Lyman Stone’s “A Population History of Denver”