AT ISSUE: Don't smother mountain counties with pavement

Barbara Allen

Published March 25, 2008 at 9:09 a.m.

Text size  

• 0 Comments
• Email
• Print

I am one of the "fewer than 10,000 people in a single county" referred to in Vincent Carroll's March 21 column "Congested thinking" who will try to "forever block this state from addressing a major impediment to the enjoyment of Colorado's high country by millions of Front Range residents." I have been in Clear Creek County, Georgetown, since 1956, before the Eisenhower/ Johnson Tunnel and before the interstate. Now, that doesn't give me any special claim to the highway, but it does put a lot of this "gridlock" into perspective for me. I remember sitting on a rock on Guanella Pass, overlooking Georgetown, and being mesmerized by the snake of tail lights wending down valley as the Sunday evening ski traffic headed home from Loveland and Arapahoe basins on the two-lane Highway 6. We were delighted when the interstate was finished. And things moved along pretty well for a while. Of course, people still had a recent memory of what a passing lane was. And what a speed limit was. And what courtesy on the road was. So you say widen the road. OK. If you start this project in 2009 and finish in 2020 you will be in the same spot. Only this time you will have nothing in the narrow valley that is Clear Creek County but a road with bumper to bumper cars on it. I'm not saying widening won't help. It will just become the same headache in another 40 years that it is now. There has to be another solution. What some of you forget is that this is not just a "single county of fewer than 10,000 people" that is trying to "forever block this state from addressing a major impediment to the enjoyment of Colorado's high country"; it is a county of fewer than 10,000 people who call this home and are desperately trying to address this major impediment, just in a way that would not destroy our homes. Yes, we are the "Whos" in "Whoville" and we are seeking high and low for a Horton to hear us. Don't just run us over with highways. Please, work with us for a solution that doesn't destroy the very valley that brought people to Colorado in the first place.

Barbara Allen is a resident of Georgetown.

Featured

• Broncos Game Action

  

  Click for more game action photos from Invesco field.

• 2008 Race for the Cure

  

  The 16th Annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

• Rocky Multimedia

  

  The news comes alive in our videos and slide shows. Catch up on today's events.

• A dream fulfilled

  

  A Rocky Mountain News and MediaStorm production

• Presidential Elections

  

  See how Colorado counties have voted through the years.

• County election profiles

  

  A look at how residents in each Colorado county may vote.

• A Dozen on Denver

  

  Connie Willis is the featured author this week in 'A Dozen on Denver'

• Rocky Truth Patrol

  

  Reporters Laura Frank and Katie Kerwin McCrimmon hunt for truth in politics.

• Peak Picks

  

  Submit your fall foliage photos to our contest and vote on other submissions.