We first visited Pagosa Springs as tourists in 2000, to stay at the Springs Resort during a vacation of hiking in Colorado national parks. A few days soaking in the hot springs after two weeks of hiking before driving to Albuquerque for the flight home was the plan. Buying property was not on the itinerary.
We arrived in Pagosa from the west, having spent the previous couple days at Mesa Verde. As we rounded the bend on Hwy 160 driving up the hill in front of the Parelli ranch and saw the view of Pagosa Peak we were entranced. Proceeding to the top of the hill that descends into town, we saw the Continental Divide in the distance. That did it. We decided to explore buying property in the area as a future retirement residence.
Having found Aspen Springs hilltop acreage on a cul-de-sac we could afford we arranged a bank cash transfer for the full purchase price to the escrow agent with closing by mail in 30 days, and left for Florida. Things ended up taking a little longer due to issues with the original survey of the entire Aspen Springs plat… (a topic for another column perhaps) but within a couple months we owned our piece of Colorado. Since then we’ve returned about once a year.
(The survey episode can serve as a cautionary tale for anyone contemplating buying Archuleta land. Unless, like me, you are cursed with a legal education and can handle such matters yourself, I suggest you contact a local attorney to handle the purchase transaction. It will add to the initial cost, but could save you a lot more in the long run.)
But regaling the tale of our Pagosa property purchase is not my purpose here. Rather, it’s to comment on Bill Hudson’s recurrent theme of relying on tourism to sustain economic stability and growth in Pagosa. We don’t want to see Pagosa destroyed by the lure of tourist dollars.
I know something about tourist-driven local economies. I grew up in Clearwater on the Florida west coast. For the past 32 years we’ve lived on the central Florida east coast (Brevard County). Other than my time in the Air Force, I’ve lived all my life in various parts of Florida.
Tourism has been an integral part of Florida’s economy, for good and ill, since – well since Ponce De Leon came ashore just south of here in 1513, and ruined it for the locals.
Bill has focused on the questionable economic feasibility of a tourist-dependent community. When the economy goes bad, tourism is one of the first casualties. And there are other unpleasant aspects which I’ll get to briefly.
My dad’s contracting business was not dependent on tourism, so the feast or famine reliance on tourists had minimal effect on my family. But many of those who did weren’t so lucky. A friend in elementary school moved away when his parents’ Clearwater Beach tourist-based business failed in the 1957 recession. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/usa/history/recession-of-1957.htm
We here in Brevard County experienced the effect on tourism of this last recession, that was exacerbated by simultaneous ending of the Space Shuttle program (thanks Obama!) when our largest employer (Kennedy Space Center) laid off thousands of employees. The ripple effect on local businesses was devastating.
Had we been dependent primarily on tourism to survive, it would have been cataclysmic. Instead we survived because there were a couple high tech employers that stuck around. As it was, home foreclosures and business failures were rampant. It’s only been since the 2016 election, and emergence of a private sector space program, that we are now experiencing real economic recovery independent of tourism.
During my childhood and adolescence (1950’s and 60’s) in Clearwater, though tourism was integral, our economy was diversified – in a sense. We were a mini-version of God’s waiting room (St Petersburg), which was famous for it’s downtown ‘green benches’ where the retirees sat all day awaiting their Social Security checks and the afterlife.
“ God’s waiting room! St. Petersburg, Florida has this nickname because of the large number of retirees there.”
Tourism, augmented by retirees. Does that sound familiar, Pagosa? Been there, done that. It doesn’t end well.
Though the economy of Clearwater has diversified since my childhood, it is still a prime tourist destination. It has the top rated beach in the country.
But the growth that accompanies a flood of tourism comes with long term costs besides those for infrastructure illuminated by Bill Hudson. The quaint mom and pop motels that stood on Clearwater Beach for generations were squeezed out by corporate high rises, time shares, and short-term rental condos. (Sounds like some Colorado ski resorts!)
As children we rode our bicycles across the causeway to the beach. Now the traffic renders that far too dangerous for local kids. The goal of Clearwater Beach tourism officials seems to be to become the next Miami Beach, though I don’t know why.
To me, Clearwater has already become too much like Miami. Uninhabitable because of the crowds and crime.
Childhood memories of the paradise I grew up in makes what it has become so comparatively unpleasant that I don’t even like visiting, despite the fact my son and grandchildren live there.
Fortunately it’s not (yet?) as bad here in my patch of the east coast, but not for lack of trying by our “Tourism Development Council” (TDC), which is funded primarily by tourist “lodging” taxes, making them a quasi-government agency with a vested interest in luring more “lodgers”, regardless of the social costs.
Becoming unlivable, like Miami and Clearwater, seems to be the TDC wetdream – and apparently a small price to pay to keep the tourist dollars flowing in. Coincidentally, many of the big beachfront tourist hotels have absentee owners. Fortunately, we now have a resurgent aerospace industry that frees us from dependence on tourism, so we are able to withstand the insidious influence of “tourist industry” shills.
Now, if you really want to see what happens when a community hits the tourism jackpot, look no further than 40 miles west of us at the theme park nightmare in Orange and Osceola counties. They average 50+ million tourists per year ! Orlando, and the surrounding environs, are becoming endless pavement, glitz, tourist traps, housing developments, stupifyingly crowded highways … and crime.
In my lifetime Orlando was a quiet moderate sized old-Florida city surrounded by orange groves and cattle ranches. All that began to end in the 70’s with the arrival of Disney – the mouse that ate central Florida.
The story of how Disney secretly bought up the property that became Disney World, and finagled their own “private government” entity to, in effect, govern themselves is the stuff of Florida legend.
It is the very definition of a company town that would be the envy of the robber barons of old. They are figuratively, and literally, a “world” unto themselves, while paying service-industry wages to the locals. That’s the pot of gold at the end of the tourism rainbow.
Though we came to Pagosa as tourists, and really still are whenever we visit (even those times I’ve pitched my tent and stayed on our hilltop property), the last thing we want is to see Pagosa become a “popular tourist destination”. We’ve seen where that leads, and it ain’t pretty.
We understand that Pagosa businesses need to prosper so we patronize them (rather than the Pagosa Lakes wallyworld) whenever we are there. We also recognize that tourism might look like the goose to lay the golden eggs. But like Blanch Dubois in dim light, the tourism economic panacea is a seductive illusion. The promise of growth that comes with an economy dependent on tourism is a siren’s song…
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.