Main Street, Pagosa Springs. Once upon a time. Before asphalt and concrete.
There comes a time in the lives of many couples when divorce seems the only viable option.
It’s not a pleasant option, by any means. Nor an easy option. Massive changes are typically required, including the division or dispersal of assets… a jointly-owned home, for example… vehicles; savings accounts; pets; family heirlooms; other important assets… and of course, there’s the painful ‘letting go’ of long-held dreams and expectations about the future. Often, children and friends are caught in the crossfire.
The divorce rate in the U.S. has fallen significantly since the 1990s — due partly to the fact that the marriage rate is down. People are choosing to live together, and have children together, without signing a marriage certificate. But so-called ‘gray divorce’ among older Americans — age 50 and older — has been increasing steadily and now comprises about 36% of all divorces.
It may seem odd that I’m writing, this morning, about divorce and the big changes required, in an article series about the Archuleta County Planning Department.
But the fact is, big changes may be on the horizon for our little rural community.
Here’s that quote from Country Commissioner Veronica Medina, mentioned yesterday in Part Two, where she suggested throwing the County Land Use Regulations “out the window” and starting over from scratch:
“Why don’t we just start from ‘scratch’? Because we definitely have too many regulations that we are not enforcing. We just don’t have the staff to do it, even before what happened last week. But if we just started with what is required by state statute, throw everything else out the window, and work on building whatever else Archuleta County needs, I think that would be a great start, with a clean slate and things that we could do better…”
If you think this sounds like Commissioner Medina is suggesting something as radical as dissolving a marriage, you might very well be right.
But it would not be a ‘gray divorce’. The County government adopted its initial Comprehensive Plan in 2001, and didn’t having designated zoning until 2006.
In a sense, the County’s problem with unenforced, and unenforceable, land use regulations is only about 20 years old. And it’s truly been a problem.
Going way back in the community’s history, we note that the County’s only municipality is Pagosa Springs, incorporated in 1891. The town didn’t need zoning or land use regulations in those early days, because the people who settled here were intelligent and enterprising. They knew very well that businesses and schools should be located along Main Street, and that the churches belonged on Lewis Street, and that the bath houses belonged next to the Hot Springs. Outside the town limits, no land use regulations were even considered. Ranchers knew how to develop their ranches; no government controls were necessary or desired.
The community grew up based on shared respect and opportunity… and very little in the way of economic resources.
But governments do like to control things, don’t they?
By the late 1980s, the Town of Pagosa Springs had put zoning limitations in place, prohibiting business from locating in residential neighborhoods and defining how and where new subdivisions could (and could not) be developed.
As already mentioned, Archuleta County later followed suit by creating a Comprehensive Plan, Land Use Regulations, and Zoning.
The goal was to prevent problems. But in my view, the County actually created more problems than they solved. They definitely created a lot more red tape. And rules. And bureaucracy. And disputes between neighbors.
Along the way, they also helped create a housing crisis.
I will be writing next week about the controversial ‘Ponderosa Mountain’ mixed-use development that’s been proposed for 70 acres just east of Great West Avenue, on the west end of downtown. It’s a textbook case of how government planning departments — believing they are doing ‘good’ for the community — find themselves actively promoting developments that no one but the developer himself wants to see approved.
100 years ago, the owner of this property west of downtown Pagosa Springs had the right to develop it in whatever manner they wanted, and could could afford. Today, the owner must abide by hundreds of rules and regulations written by government bureaucrats.
We understand that these bureaucrats created the rules and regulations with the goal of encouraging a ‘better’ community.
But the hard truth is that these same rules and regulations have now resulted in a community where only wealthy families can afford to buy a house, and where many working families are living in RVs and crowded, substandard housing.
Is this a good time — now, in 2026 — to divorce ourselves from dysfunctional land use regulations? A good time to throw the book out the window and start over ‘from scratch’?
Normally, a planning department bureaucracy would strive mightily to hold on to their Land Use Regulations and their ability to control development, for what they believe to be the community’s benefit.
But the Archuleta County government does not have a Planning Department at this moment. The entire staff has been fired or has resigned.
So… what shall we do about that?
I know that in my own life, numerous situations presented themselves as excellent reasons to get divorced, but my wife Clarissa and I always found a way, somehow, to work things out.
Until, finally, we couldn’t.