Fruita, CO

Biking a Rocky Road to Success

The hardscrabble hills and slick rock canyons that wind past Fruita, Colo., have made the town a mountain biker’s paradise. More than 1,000 miles of desert trails to explore have cyclists flocking here to test their strength—and nerve—on Fruita’s rocky terrain.

Before mountain bikers arrived in recent years, this Colorado town was on a rough road of its own. Twenty years ago, oil companies were plumbing western Colorado soil for the oil locked in the underground shale. When the industry went bust in the early 1980s, however, Fruita did, too. The town of 2,000 saw its unemployment rate soar to 20 percent and it teetered near bankruptcy for years.

Then Troy Rarick arrived. A cyclist from nearby Grand Junction, Rarick was gearing up to manage a bike shop in Moab, Utah, which was exploding as a mountain biker’s magnet. Instead, Rarick set his sights closer to home. He and partner Rondo Buecheler bought an abandoned honey plant in 1995 in Fruita’s slumbering downtown and set up the town’s sole bike shop, Over the Edge Sports.

“There were literally tumbleweeds blowing in the doorway,” Rarick recalls. He saw Fruita’s potential as a gateway to canyon country, and little by little, the jeans and flannel town opened up to Lycra-clad newcomers.

“We love to see a car full of bikes going down the street stuck behind a tractor,” Rarick says with a laugh. “That’s a melding of two worlds.”

Town leaders have tried to encourage cyclists without overwhelming Fruita’s rural character. As cyclists cut some 150 miles of new trails, the town worked to preserve its farm heritage and historic downtown.

“I don’t do any biking. I’m too old for that,” says Guy Carlucci, 78, a Fruita native. “But I think it’s a good thing. It brings a lot of people in.” Carlucci’s fruit stand is a popular stop for some cyclists, who fill their packs with fresh peaches and honey sticks before setting out.

Fruita’s population has swelled now to 6,478, some drawn by cycling, some by the town’s charm. Unemployment has all but disappeared, thanks largely to tourism.

Bikes aren’t the only draw. Fruita is surrounded by some 300 dinosaur digs. Visitors stroll the Trail Through Time into a working quarry and see exposed fossilized bones on Dinosaur Hill. At the Dinosaur Journey museum, families dash between robotic dinosaur displays. Downtown, a Tyrannosaurus rex statue stands guard over the gazebo.

The outlying canyons also beckon hikers with a concentration of rock arches second only to Moab’s. Annual festivals celebrate bluegrass and Fruita’s most famous former resident, Mike, a rooster who survived his 1945 beheading to travel the carnival circuit for 18 headless months.

But mountain bikers are the engine driving Fruita’s new life. Some 20,000 a year wheel through town, looking for the rugged terrain praised in magazines like Bicycling and Men’s Journal.

The town welcomes the attention—cautiously.

Fruita’s annual Fat Tire Festival, launched by Over the Edge, was key in luring mountain bikers here. But then organizers pulled their national ads to keep the number of visitors down.

Town leaders like riders such as Chip Klenk, 57, a diesel mechanic who moved here—his wife’s hometown—in 1995 and soon took up mountain biking. Now he logs up to 75 miles a week on his custom bike through desert and mountain trails.

“I’ve ridden up on deer. I’ve ridden up on elk. I’ve ridden up on coyotes,” Klenk says.

If these outdoor enthusiasts are on Fruita’s road to the future, this old farm town’s ready to go along for the ride—as long as it doesn’t go too fast.

David M. Frey lives and writes in Carbondale, Colo.

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