Travis
Trail Wise!
WYOMING NATIVE
Posts: 2,574
|
Post by Travis on Sept 9, 2021 16:51:13 GMT -8
The small, remote towns on both sides of the Sangres have (so far) maintained their isolation and rustic charm, for the most part. And I'd guess those towns have a good chance of remaining that way for the near future. That's partly because of their distance from larger cities with adequate healthcare for some of the older folks with money that are part of the development pattern. They want to have easy access to healthcare that only larger cities provide. The Silvercliffe/Westcliffe area is separated from Pueblo, Colorado by the Wet Mountains, a pass at around 9000 feet and well over an hour's drive in the best of weather. In my experience, that is not conducive to the type of development we are discussing. And Crestone is much further away from a larger city than the Silvercliffe/Westcliffe area.
There are quite a few other towns similar to those, if not in character then location, within the Rocky Mtn. states.
But back to Bozeman in the opening post, if anyone has been watching the miniseries "Yellowstone" on Paramount, a lot of what we have been discussing in this thread (and others) is very much the focus of the miniseries. While the fictional Dutton Ranch is located in Paradise Valley, Bozeman is the city of business transactions and the scheming to take over the Dutton Ranch for development. Beth Dutton, the rough and tumble adult daughter protecting the financial interest of the Duttons, often bad-mouths the newcomers who are changing the character of Bozeman. One of the recent episodes in season 3 shows a map of the huge Dutton Ranch halfway up Paradise Valley between Livingston and Gardiner, Montana. In real life that location has been subject to real-estate development for decades, but there are still some affordable purchases available if you have $300,000 to spend. If you have $2 million, the options are many and varied. There is you ageing folks' access to healthcare in Livingston and Bozeman. But don't get on the bad side of the Duttons by trying to change the town to suit you.
|
|
muleman
Trail Wise!
Forester
Posts: 91
|
Post by muleman on Sept 10, 2021 6:51:50 GMT -8
We live in a almost purely Capitalist Society. Real estate prices reflect demand versus supply.
There is plenty of cheap housing in places like Detroit, Texas, and the Rust Belt. There is an oversupply of housing. In the West making a living in remote areas used to be a challenge. Now people can work from a computer terminal. The public land that makes living in mountain towns attractive, limits the amount of private land available for development. There are hundreds of great places to live in the West, most people not from the area have never heard of. Bozeman is an unusual situation, not the norm.
Some places are loved to death. The next time I get near Sedona, AZ I will drive around it. My Dad had a ranch near there for 35 years. I used to love to go to the Oak Creek Tavern. Now there is nowhere to park, even at the trailheads.
|
|
rangewalker
Trail Wise!
Agitate, organize and educate.
Posts: 1,029
|
Post by rangewalker on Sept 12, 2021 6:18:17 GMT -8
From the perspective of someone who grew up in the Mountain West and wishes some of my fellow denizens of the region would recognize the 2020's boom is just another spin in the historical cycle.
My parents emigrated from the mid-south and Midwest in the late fifties to the post-WW ll southwest of Tucson and Phoenix. In 1959 Tucson was adding 1,000 folks a month for cheap land, the climate, and a host of new industries. The industry was WW ll vets who come into the southwest for training or other military services and loved it. The school district I was in in 1960 was a diverse mix of middle white tech people, Native Americans with Yaqui and Papago represented, Chinese farming families, Hispanic families from before that land was the US, Mexican immigrant, the Black community, and the last white migrant farmworkers that settled there during the '30s.
While in HS and College, I worked in factories that had run away from the Midwest for cheap labor and give-ways from cities and towns that wanted the jobs. The last one was in aerospace and aviation. And that was in Prescott, AZ. Prescott's leading industry now is retirement support and assisted living. And MAGA. When a kid hiking and backpacking across the National Forest filled with mine sites and logging the desert forest. Those Ponderosa pines have a stand replacement that runs 100+ years. With climate change, they aren't coming back.
In my corner of NE Wyoming, Sheridan, my hiking partner sold her home on a cash offer two months ago for $820k. She had bought it for $380K in 2014. Put maybe $40k in improvements and remodeling. The appraised price on a two-bedroom farmhouse with 3 acres was $620. The buyers were a retired lawyer couple who had been priced out of Jackson. That sale allowed her to purchase a similar sized property on the Admiralty Sound outside Port Townsend, WA. The area is full of ghost towns from failed agriculture and underground mining.
|
|