Colorado

By Kimberly Black ~ photography by Matt Lit. Colorado Gator Reptile Park is recovering, rebuilding, and open to the public after a devastating fire last year burned down a barn and killed as many as 180 animals. The educational reptile facility in Mosca has been open to the public since a week after the fire. A lot of people thought the facility was entirely closed but as family, owner-operator Jay Young said, “We’ve been open the whole time.  We shut down for a week because we had to regroup and figure things out. We got through last summer. It was difficult, but we had to be open or we’d...

Just a 1.5-hour drive from Crestone, Wolf Creek Ski Resort is the perfect day trip for some fun in the snow. You won’t find the locally-owned area on any of the so called ‘super passes,’ and therein lies the charm. It’s not hard to see why the downhill area boasts that it has “the most snow in Colorado;” even this early in the season, when snow coverage is thin in many places, there are pockets of champagne powder hiding in the trees and over 90% of their terrain is already open. Lift tickets will cost you a fraction of what they...

Colorado Governor Jared Polis spoke to Crestone Eagle Editor John Waters in a wide-ranging interview on September 22 that included the proposal by Renewable Water Resources to export water from the San Luis Valley to Douglas County, the governor’s initiative, the Heat Beneath our Feet to increase energy production from geothermal sources, the possibilities of agrivoltaics in the San Luis Valley, the affects of decreased cannabis tax revenues and a possible bid for the White House in 2024. Polis began the interview by saying he is “super-excited” the Crestone Eagle is now a non-profit. POLIS: Congrats on the non-profit model ....

On December 13, 2021 in Colorado’s US District Court, Senior Judge John Kane ordered annulling the Wolf Creek land exchange land patent and also verifying “the unwinding of the land exchange” that the Forest Service had officially proposed, and put into motion, through their final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Record of Decision, back in 2014. This current Order was necessary, because it removes ambiguity and formalizes the result of Judge John Matsch’s decision back in 2017, that set aside the land exchange, which Leavell McCombs Joint Venture (LMJV), had filed to dismiss. This second proposed land exchange would have connected...

This investigation is part of the ongoing “On Edge” series about Colorado’s mental health by the Colorado News Collaborative, the nonprofit that unites more than 160 communities and news outlets like ours to ensure quality news for all Coloradans. The series title reflects a state that has the nation’s highest rate of adult mental illness and lowest access to care, and the fact that state government is on the edge of either turning around its behavioral health care system or simply reorganizing a bureaucracy that is failing too many Coloradans. Matt Vinnola lay curled up on a downtown sidewalk one...

By November, those who heat their dwellings with wood stoves should have a good stock of firewood, mainly of beetle-killed spruce trees from dead stands in sub-alpine forests, mostly in the San Juan Range to our southwest and in the Cochetopa Hills to our west and northwest (as from Sargents Mesa).  Trips over Wolf Creek and Slumgullion passes show the extent of that devastation. In general, the future of these forests does not look good, as revealed in a recent article, and as I explain here. About 37% of Colorado is forested, mainly in the western part of the state;...