Photo: San Juan Lumber Company mill at the intersection of Highways 160 and 84, in Pagosa Springs. Photo circa 1970?
I was looking through back issues of the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN newspaper, at the library last week, and I got the sense that our local business and government leaders would like our economy to become more “diversified”.
Some people are never satisfied.
Not too long ago, I hear, the Pagosa Springs economy was based totally on a big lumber mill at the east end of town, plus a bunch of cows and sheep. Reportedly, the San Juan Lumber Company was, all by itself, responsible for about one quarter of all the jobs in town. I guess the rest were cowboys and sheep herders. And a few school teachers, of course.
We’ve come a long way from those days, in terms of being diversified. By my count, there are eight marijuana dispensaries in town, and that’s just for starters. We also now have a Walmart, and a good number of gas stations, and two hot springs resorts.
I have to confess, I didn’t actually count the number of marijuana dispensaries myself. I actually asked AI how many we have.
But I did count the hot springs resorts.
We still have plenty of cows. And schoolteachers.
Sheep? Not so much. In fact, the only sheep I’ve come across in the past couple of years are three sculptural sheep, cast in bronze, hanging out near the Walmart store. For about a year, a sculpture of a traditional shepherd stood all alone there at that same site, until the County government began to feel sorry for him and funded three bronze sheep to keep him company.
The way the sheep are installed, they look like they’re doing their best to ignore one another.
For some reason, I thought sheep were more friendly than that.
But maybe the artist was making a statement. About ‘diversity’ for example. The urge to be different from the rest of the flock. Follow your own path.
Pagosa Springs is already different, but maybe we can be even more different.
Like I mentioned, the folks in charge of our local economy regularly talk about diversity. We really got stuck on the “tourism economy treadmill” which is not where you want to be stuck when gas costs $4 a gallon.
Besides, having a tourism economy is sort of like eating the same thing every morning for breakfast. Sure, there are people who eat oatmeal every morning, day in and day out. In fact, my dad used to eat oatmeal every morning. I never understood that. What’s wrong with scrambled eggs every now and then? But no, it was always oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal.
The opposite of diversity.
Some Colorado communities, to diversify their economies, are trying to attract data centers, which I hear are not as foul-smelling as lumber mills but use a lot more water and electricity. Way more water and electricity, probably, than we have in Pagosa Springs.
And to make matters worse, the data centers are these enormous buildings with almost nobody working inside. Just a lot of Artificial Intelligence going on, but no real jobs for people.
I wonder if we should just bring back the sheep? They produce wool, and we could all learn to knit sweaters.
But I would want the sheep to be friendly.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.