Telluride : Move Over, Aspen : The Old Colorado Town Retains Its Bucolic Charm Despite a New Boom in Glitzy Resort Development Nearby

Everything’s coming up roses in the Rockies--particularly at Mountain Village, a new $1-billion satellite community that’s taking shape eight miles outside Telluride.

So take a powder Vail. Get lost Aspen.

Created to accommodate 7,000 residents and vacationers, Mountain Village is destined to relieve the strain on Telluride as the little mining town continues its fight to keep its Victorian image from caving in to commercialism.

The centerpiece for the new village is a $90-million, European-style hotel set to open in December, 1991, with underground parking, four indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a waterslide, an immense ballroom, a championship golf course and a spa with hot tubs, steam rooms, Jacuzzis, a couple of dozen massage rooms, mud baths and a Nautilus center.

Penthouse apartments are selling for up to $1.6 million at the Doral Resort & Spa, which is the name given to the new hotel. In addition, seven condominium projects are completed, while others are on the rise. At Mountain Village, residential lots start at $150,000 and homes and condominiums are tagged at $150,000 to $3 million.

Meanwhile, residents dine at La Chamonix and the Blue Mesa, and Watson’s is a 1950s-style soda fountain, grill and grocery. Scattered throughout the village, which locals describe as the St. Moritz of the Rockies, will be boutiques, markets, an art gallery and apres -ski facilities set in the center of 2,500 acres. With the arrival of winter, vacationers will ski out their doors to chair lifts for a ride to slopes designed for beginners, intermediates and Olympic champions.

Early on, ex-miner Bill Mahoney put together Telluride’s first ski tow--a jerry-built contraption that Mahoney hooked to the rear axle of a vintage jalopy. Later, after a Beverly Hills businessman laced the mountain with sophisticated chairlifts, Colorado developer Ron Allred arrived with plans for the new satellite village he intends to connect to Telluride via a $10-million gondola.

With the voice of the bulldozer roaring in the Rockies, the ski boom is on.

Besides downhill and cross country skiing, vacationers will join Nordic tours to Lizard Head, Trout Lake and Deep Creek Mesa. Heli-skiing is in the works, along with sleigh rides and hot-air balloon trips over the Rockies. During summer and autumn, vacationers will fish and play golf, hike to alpine meadows and invade ghost towns by Jeep.

Vacationers at Mountain Village also are checking into Pennington’s, a deluxe 12-room B&B; with a sunken lounge, Jacuzzis, a steam room and complimentary mountain bikes for exploring the Rockies. Surrounded by 14,000-foot peaks, Pennington’s is a first-rate inn with prices to match--up to $260 a night, depending on the season. (And all this time we thought B&Bs; were for the traveler on a budget?)

Meanwhile, in the little box canyon that’s home to Telluride, cash registers are ringing merrily as fame of the new village neighbor rubs off on this old mining community. From boom town to ghost town to boom town again, Telluride has come full circle. Only this time the pay dirt involves raw land rather than ore.

Anyone who staked a claim in Telluride a couple of years ago is on a roll. With prices skyrocketing, old miners are reaping the rewards. Lots that sold barely two years ago for $10,000 are bringing $100,000 and up. Indeed, Sharon Shuteron, a judge who presides over Telluride’s county court when she isn’t frying hamburgers at her restaurant across the street, tells how it’s nearly impossible to buy prime land for under $250,000.

One old Victorian on the market for $900,000 could have been snapped up five years ago for $100,000. Meanwhile, a dozen real estate offices doing business along a four-block stretch of Main Street are pushing properties ranging from $1-million mansions to fixer-uppers selling for a measly $200,000.

Gary Eschman, who traded a computer software business in Utah for a B&B; in Telluride, still broods over missing a chance to buy a town lot three years ago for $44,000 that sold this spring for $130,000 and is on the market currently for $210,000. Says Eschman: Pass the Kleenex, please.

As for Eschman’s inn, the San Sophia, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill, cutesy mom ‘n’ pop B&B.; Victorian on the outside, the San Sophia is pure luxury inside, what with brass beds, firm mattresses, handmade quilts, tiled baths, a library-lounge and a deck for dining during Eschman’s celebrated gourmet breakfasts. Luxury doesn’t come cheap. Summer rates range from $70 to $170, and shelter in winter goes anywhere from $125 to $210.

In its dizzying turnaround, Telluride is kicking up a storm again.

Telluride’s first boom came after a silver strike in the late 1800s. The Smuggler, one of the town’s storied mines, produced more than $100 million in silver--this when the ore sold for a trifling $20 an ounce. Miners overran the valley. At the turn of the century the population stood at 5,000.

Telluride became wild, wealthy and wicked. As ore poured from the mountains, whiskey poured from saloons. Twenty-six gin mills lined the streets. The town roared around the clock as dance halls remained open day and night. Brothels on Pacific Street never missed a beat. The streets of Telluride were as crowded at 2 o’clock in the morning as they were at noon. And although paychecks were lost in the town’s gambling joints, the miners always came back for more.

Finally in the late ‘20s the silver market collapsed and the town slid into obscurity. Mines shut down. Saloons closed. Dance halls were boarded up. By the time the miners had finished their exodus, fewer than 500 souls were left. Later bootleggers arrived and for several years Telluride was kept solvent with whiskey runs to the far corners of Colorado.

Still, it was a boom town that had gone bust.

There was a brief comeback as mines reopened in the ‘30s and ore trains moved again. Telluride once more sought its rainbow. But skies clouded over again. The prosperity of the 1890’s and the early ‘20s remained but a melancholy memory. Telluride never fully recovered.

It took Beverly Hills entrepreneur Joe Zoline, who installed the chairlifts, to turn Telluride into the new rage of the Rockies. This was in the 1960s, and in his mind neither the Alps of Europe nor the magnificent mountains of Argentina and Chile compared with the beauty of Telluride. No matter what the season, the scenery is breathtaking--with the green of aspens in summer and the gold of autumn. Although Zoline’s lifts were unobtrusive, a lodge he built caused a stir. A low-rise unit on the approach to town, it was described by one old-timer as “the damnedest pile of lumber I ever saw.” Peering closer, he declared “the whole thing is full of windows!”

To discourage development that residents feared could destroy Telluride’s Victorian splendor, the town was designated a registered National Historic Landmark. As a result, Telluride remains securely locked in its box canyon, with aging brick buildings, gingerbread houses, waterfalls and a river that flows to the valley beyond.

Only a few miles off the highway leading from Montrose to Durango, Telluride stands out like the set for a TV Western. In June, thousands attend a bluegrass festival, and the Fourth of July is kicked off by a dynamite explosion at dawn. Afterward, members of the volunteer fire department steer their trucks along down Main Street in a parade that features horses, floats and the high school band. Later, the entire town gathers in the park for an old-fashioned turn-of-the-century picnic, with hand-cranked ice cream and hot dogs and pies and cakes and kids competing in sack races and adults playing horse shoes. Finally, as the day darkens, the sky blazes with fireworks.

Telluride isn’t easily forgotten. Gary Hickcox, the executive director of Telluride’s Chamber Resort Assn., tells how there’s “a sense of community, a small-town atmosphere.” Which is why Hickcox chose Colorado over Southern California in 1975. “The neat thing about this town is that people care.” But he cautions: “If Telluride ever becomes one of those mega-ski resorts, I’m gone.”

In Telluride visitors shop for antiques on Main Street and overdose on chocolates at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Events run from chamber music and jazz to a world-renowned film festival. Composers arrive for symposiums and there’s theater in the old Opera House next to the New Sheridan Hotel (circa 1895). Just a door away, Mary Ann Gaston peddles hot dogs from her antique popcorn wagon along with an assortment of “upscale McDonald-type goodies.”

Gaston, who abandoned the freeways of Los Angeles for the ski slopes of Colorado, paid $11,000 for land in Telluride that she sold recently for $100,000. With her windfall, Gaston put up a home she figures would fetch $400,000 in today’s market. As real estate continues to soar, Gaston tells how the twin towns of Telluride and Mountain Village are attracting Aspen’s “leftover millionaires.”

Several years ago, Telluride struck a slogan telling how “getting to Telluride is easy, leaving is the hard part.”

Vacationers arrive at a new airport 10 minutes from Telluride. Perched at an altitude of 9,068 feet, it’s touted as the highest commercial landing strip in the United States. Without argument, it ended forever Telluride’s isolation from the stressful world beyond its spectacular peaks. (With new nonstop flights from Los Angeles starting in December, bigger crowds are expected this winter).

Still, compared with Aspen and Vail, Telluride is as relaxed as a Rocky Mountain cowtown. High fashion is out, jeans and flannels are in. Indeed, when an Aspen furrier opened his door a couple of years ago, he was sent packing before the season ended. In Telluride, locals figure mink should be worn only by animals.

This isn’t to say that Telluride is dull or stodgy. Crowds gather at the Fly Me To The Moon Saloon with its reggae beat. Others dine at Angel Chakeres’ restaurant, the Athenian Senate, where Jack Dempsey once washed dishes and customers lock arms to dance like “Zorba the Greek.”

Chakeres, who shifted from Tucson to Telluride, encourages patrons to raise a little hell, break a few dishes. Not her fine china, mind you, but dishes she pickes up for a dime apiece from the Salvation Army. A few weeks ago when a group from San Diego dropped by to drink ouzo and break plates, Chakeres recoiled.

“You gotta eat first,” she said. “Eat, drink and then break dishes. Those are the rules.”

This is not to imply that her digs are showered with busted crockery. The fact of the matter is, the Athenian Senate is downright respectable, even though it occupies a one-time brothel off Popcorn Alley, Telluride’s old red light district. As one of Telluride’s premiere restaurants, the Athenian Senate serves all manner of Greek dishes, including a vegetarian moussaka that features tofu, fresh mushrooms, eggplant, pine nuts and tomatoes topped with kasseri cheese in a bechamel sauce. Other entrees range from dolmathes (a blend of ground meats and rice wrapped in grape leaves with an egg-lemon sauce) to lamb stroganoff served over fettuccine.

What with fresh flowers, Greek music that flows as smoothly as the ouzo and retsina, and a warm ambience, who cares if the sofas in the saloon are a trifle shopworn?

At the other end of town, German fare is served at Leimgruber’s Bierstube & Restaurant, whose proprietress escaped from East Berlin years before the Wall came tumbling down. At Leimgruber’s, Bavarian melodies set the mood, and during Oktoberfest an oompah band from Austria does the honors. Inside, the lace curtains and candlelight makes Leimgruber’s reminiscent of a bierstube in Bavaria.

With the arrival of autumn, the aspen trees are turning in Telluride and cool evenings signal the change of seasons. Tonight it is raining and thunder rolls through the narrow canyon, colliding with cliffs that dive straight to the valley floor. Outside the little Manitou Hotel, the peaceful San Miguel River flows gently by, and there’s a trout pond and a trail for hikers and joggers as well as paths that lead up the mountain. When the weather turns cold a fire is lit in the lounge, which is a fine place to be--particularly on a stormy evening. One like tonight.