Steamboat Springs, CO

In 1913, Norwegian Carl Howelsen arrived in Steamboat Springs, Colo., and taught this cowboy town to ski. It hasn’t been the same since.

This century-old community (pop. 6,768) still balances its ranching heritage with a booming ski culture, struggling to keep agriculture alive in “Ski Town USA.” As land values soar and beef prices sour, innovative programs aim to keep ranchers on their land.

“Ranching and mining are truly the heritage of this area,” says Dean Vogelaar, who has been active in preserving Steamboat’s ranching. “They play a very significant role in what Steamboat is all about.”

After seeing new houses gobble up more and more acres, Routt County voters in 1996 added a new property tax to buy ranchers’ development rights and keep the land open. Third generation cattleman Jim Stanko recently took advantage of the program. Instead of selling his 600 acres of windswept meadow for millions to developers, he put part in a conservation easement, which prevents houses from ever being built there, but allows him to keep ranching the land.

“My neighborhood that I grew up in, there were 10 ranches,” he says. “I’m the only one left out of 10.” With help from private land trusts and state and federal agencies, the county pays ranchers for their right to build on part of their land. Such land trusts have saved 33,000 acres around Steamboat from development.

And some ranchers eye Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. as a potential ally. Yampa Valley Beef sells 50,000 pounds of local beef a year to area restaurants, including the resort. Sheep farmers may market lambs the same way. And Routt County Woolens makes local wool into specialty blankets for tourists.

Meanwhile, the county formed a Community Agriculture Alliance to help ranchers adapt to the changing economy by marketing to the ski resort.

“I think this community has been very much a model for success because of its ability to work together,” says extension agent C.J. Mucklow, who helped set up the alliance and the conservation easement program.

Ranchers capitalizing on the resort is a turnaround for Steamboat, where the ski area aggressively markets the town’s Western image. Cowboys and skiers are featured equally in brochures. Olympian Billy Kidd, the resort’s director of skiing, is famous for carving turns with little but his trademark Stetson visible above the powder. And the resort hosts events like the Cowboy Downhill, where rodeo riders swap their broncos for skis.

“People have been ranching since the early 1900s. As a resort, that’s kind of tied in to who we are as a community,” says Mike Lane, spokesman for the resort.

A festive cattle drive ran down Lincoln Avenue last Independence Day, but it’s been decades since the last real drive. The Tread of Pioneers Museum does offer both a look at how early settlers lived and area skiing history.

Cowboys and skiers still come together at the annual Winter Carnival Howelsen started as a celebration and a way to introduce competitive skiing. Ski races and jump competitions dominate, but the high school band marches downtown on cross-country skis, and ranchers on horseback still tug children on skis in the Norwegian game of “skijoring.”

When Howelsen first came to town, he was a lone skier among ranchers. Now, the town boasts a million skier days a year, with more Olympians hailing from here than any other U.S. city.

But like skijorers, they’re following in the path of the ranchers who came before them. Steamboat is changing, but it’s determined to hold on to its Western heritage—with skiers on one end of a rope and ranchers on the other.

David M. Frey is a freelance writer from Carbondale, Colo.

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