A Portrait of a Beloved Mining Town

by John Sutcliffe

As we are opening a new business in Durango, I've been spending considerably more time here. Real time - reading, drawing and even chatting across a crumb-laden table of coffee and croissants - but also listening attentively to questions, oft repeated, but with a common theme. It doesn't seem to matter the setting: a polished restaurant, a noisy bar, a bookstore, or my favorite coffee shop. Everyone seems curious about how everyone else got to the town they “so” celebrate. Beware that curiosity is sometimes couching the longing to recount, in endless detail, the

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serpentine route that the person asking the question pursued. That said, the majority of the curiosity I have witnessed is genuine. It is as though people find it hard to imagine how anyone but them would have the forethought and temerity to get to Durango. So, let's delve a little into this phenomenon, this remarkable affection for the town. At times charmingly naïve, at other times persuasively expressed with median incomes, land prices, and progressive schools; the standard real estate mantra. I always expect to be asked how I got to the place, from the melting pots of New York and L.A. My accent triggers it, but rarely with the authentic interest that I get here. I know I am groping for an explanation of the significance that is placed on getting here.

Durango is different. Different from its neighbors, not falling between the rural anger of some and the spoiled petulance of others, but rather rejecting those unattractive excesses. How does a small mountain town retain the independence, which it seems to have done, from prevailing unquestioning stances? How long has this been true and what's its history? One might also ask, is this independence part of its celebrated charm? Being in Colorado is a good start for any town. Surveys indicate people love the state, and that affection is not counterbalanced by the loathing people have for other popular states: such as California, Florida, and New York. Even by Colorado standards, Durango's setting is extraordinary: on the very edge of the Rockies, overlooking the wonderland of sculpted canyons and their majestic rivers. Neighbor to the largest and most intact Native American communities, benefiting from the brilliant spirituality and creativity they convey. Sometimes forgotten is the fact that La Plata County was the most northerly of the Hispanic settlements. Where ranchers, such as the Montoyas and Calabrias, are still living on the land grants that Philip of Spain granted their ancestors in the late 1700s. But that is only part of it.

So how do people get to Durango, and do they have a real sense of the place before they begin their journey? It was my turn to ask how a town established by cowboys, miners, and loggers has developed this cachet. Ordinary by many standards, there is the usual rank of Victorian buildings, pleasant homes on tree-lined avenues, the odd sentimental sculpture, a few celebrations of the previous inhabitants, gently idealized; a simple, unapologetic backcloth to a very vibrant, confident town. So, the miners began a town that today has thoughtful cinemas, excellent restaurants, a theater, a burgeoning college that elicits the same affection and loyalty as the town, bookstores, quirky clothing shops. It is a place that celebrates the wilderness within which it resides. Within the freedom and adventure the miners sought, they nestled a loathing for the ordinary; a fear of routine. They rejected the old order, and were full of dreams, quite different in their nature but sufficient to face the rigors and dangers of this new world. The miner for that single score, the cowboy for milk-fat calves amongst the aspens, and the vagabond for a world in which his wandering thoughts might prosper. A place with a newspaper and a rollicking bar before law and order, from the torpor of civilization to the bustle of change. I came in the company of a corrupt but charming fellow from Illinois who traveled from town to town with a string of sore ponies that he raced. We ran, then, across ground that now seems to be the high school, ending up in the old, beautiful, sandstone fairgrounds. Two days was all he could safely remain in a place before his wheelingdealing, hustling, cheating, gambling, and deceit surfaced sufficiently for it to be healthier for him to move on. I will have a Tasting Room in Durango in a month or two and would love to hear all these pent-up stories.