Study of the New Rockies Finds Old West Is Old Hat

The myths and paradoxes of the new American West were explored Tuesday as experts here released a comprehensive report highlighting sweeping changes in population, growth and the environment across the Rocky Mountain region.

Most Westerners don’t live off the land, aren’t especially rugged and like big-box stores and lattes as much as anyone else, the statistics show.

They are, however, better educated than most Americans, younger and living in a beautiful region that’s become the fastest growing in the country.

“We continue to believe this Marlboro man, cowboy myth about the West,” said Walter Hecox, a professor of economics at Colorado College. He pointed out that 1.7% of Westerners earn a living from agriculture, mining or other natural resource-based occupations.

Hecox helped organize the first State of the Rockies Conference, held this week at Colorado College. A collection of scholars examined census data and trends in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho and Montana to present a social and economic portrait of the region.

Each of the 280 counties in the West received a letter grade based on poverty levels, education, employment, per capita income and income distribution. The highest-scoring were often the richest places, like Teton County, Wyo. -- while the worst were the most impoverished places, like McKinley County, N.M.

Skyrocketing population was identified as the single biggest challenge facing the West. In the last 30 years, the Rocky Mountain region has seen a 119% growth rate, compared to a national rate of 39%. Most has been in Arizona and Colorado.

“We are booming,” Hecox said.

And that has brought change to the West’s racial makeup. Latinos now account for 20% of the population, and are a near majority in Denver.

People here are younger than those in the rest of the country, with a median age of 33, compared with 35 nationwide. They are better educated -- 84% have high school diplomas, as opposed to 80% for the rest of the nation.

The report found that many retirees were bypassing the sunny Southwest to spend their golden years in the mountains. Wyoming has become a major retirement haven.

With the population growth has come sprawl. Huge ranches are being carved into ranchettes and housing tracts -- especially around Denver, Phoenix and Salt Lake City.

“In Colorado, sprawl gobbles up 10 acres an hour,” said F. Patrick Holmes, program coordinator for the Rockies Project at Colorado College. “The burgeoning American interest in rural second homes adds to these pressures.”

Summit and Eagle counties in Colorado, both booming ski areas, and the Sun Belt communites around Phoenix are among the top places attracting newcomers, Holmes said.

The population boom hasn’t come without cost, the report said.

Forests have been thinned by logging and fire suppression. Some 9,000 rivers have been dammed, water is scarce and nitrogen from thousands of cattle on feedlots has polluted the skies.

Jill Baron, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said that 60% of all fish in Rocky Mountain waters were not native, and that native grasslands were being supplanted by aggressive species from Eurasia.

“Our growth trends in Colorado up to the year 2025 [go] up and up and up,” she said. “We are heading for a megalopolis from Pueblo to the Wyoming border.”

Still, it’s a vast region and, despite the sprawl, 1.4% of Western land has been devoted to urban development, the study said. In some places, especially on the poor, rural eastern Plains, towns are dying. Some counties have five people per square mile.

The overall best quality-of-life ratings were awarded to four Colorado counties. Gilpin, Douglas, El Paso and Larimer received A-pluses. The judgment was made based on per capita income, unemployment rate, education levels and natural amenities.

Counties receiving an F-minus were Cascade, Mont.; Valencia, N.M.; Owyhee, Idaho; and Gem, Idaho.

Many of the lowest-rated counties included Indian reservations such as the Navajo of Arizona and New Mexico. McKinley County, with a per capita income of $13,896 and 37% of residents living in poverty, was ranked as the most distressed.

Boulder County, Colo., home to the University of Colorado, was chosen as the most-educated place in the Rockies, with 21% of its population holding a graduate degree or higher compared with the regional average of 9%. Summit County was listed as the healthiest place to live. Santa Fe, N.M., was tops in arts and culture. Teton County, near Yellowstone National Park, was No. 1 for the best quality public lands. It was recently named the richest county in America.

Baron warned that it would be the thousands of small changes people make on the land that would, in the end, change the nature of the Rockies.

“We are fortunate to have this wonderful landscape around, but we are extremely powerful,” she said. “We can change the landscape in an eye blink, and we are seeing that eye blink all around us.”