Popular Western Resorts Become Trophy-Home Ghost Towns

Colorado’s mountains are sprinkled with ghost towns, the skeletons of once-thriving mining towns that sprouted and died quickly when the silver or gold was gone.

These days, a new kind of ghost town haunts the high country. Instead of crumbling wooden mills and piles of rock, the latest incarnation has rows of large, expensive homes that sit empty and dark for several months of the year.

In resort towns across the West like Vail, Aspen, Telluride, Taos, Incline Village and Sun Valley, entire neighborhoods empty out at the same time.

The phenomenon of the “trophy home” is changing the social and economic makeup in the resort areas. The neighbors aren’t neighbors anymore.

“It used to be that you’d have cows at the neighbor’s property and they’d have cows at yours. Now, with the purchase of those properties, a ‘No Trespassing’ sign goes up the next day,” said Telesfor Gonzales in Taos, N.M.

“Taos County used to be a friendly community, a community that didn’t hesitate to say, ‘Good morning. Hi. How are you?’--and we’re losing that.”

Joe Marson mourns the gradual loss of a sense of community at Incline Village, Nev., along the shore of Lake Tahoe.

“You see more and more homes being fenced off, and that’s one thing I really hate,” he said. “In a small town, your neighbors can always look in on the place if you’re gone for a few days. But with the fences and the rest of this, that’s what we’re going to lose.”

Rancher Jay Fetcher’s father, John, started the Steamboat Springs ski area in north-central Colorado. The family is determined to preserve the rural lifestyle despite pressures from developers and rising property values endemic to resorts.

An association formed by Fetcher and neighboring landowners to keep condos from replacing cows is considered a regional model for groups trying to save farmland.

But as he looks around, he sees more and more vacation homes that are vacant most of the time.

“What I see now, particularly in Steamboat, are trophy homes purchased on ridge tops and they have lights in them at Christmas and no other time,” Fetcher said.

“I think what troubles these small communities [is] . . . that these people don’t come here to be neighbors. They come here to get away from neighbors.”

The “ranchettes” are usually built on 35-acre sites because a loophole in a state law exempts the parcels from most regulations. Fetcher and other critics say the homes are carving up productive agricultural land.

Fetcher praises the wealthy newcomers who buy and maintain ranches that otherwise would have been sold and subdivided. And he concedes that the homes, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and more, add to the tax coffers.

But Fetcher said the homes are driving up property values and forcing out locals. That has left voids in the community. It’s hard to get enough people to serve on town boards and volunteer fire departments, he said.

“There’s so much more that belongs in a community than property taxes.”

Business and government leaders in Aspen and Vail agree. About 70% of the homes in both towns are second homes.

“Huge neighborhoods are just dark most of the year. Trick-or-treating is just nonexistent,” said Andrew Knudtsen, Vail’s housing planner.

A big effect of the increasing number of vacation homes in Aspen is “just the loss of housing inventory” for year-round residents, said Dave Tolen, the town’s housing director.

“Beyond that, what we’ve found in recent years is there’s a high demand for an urban level of service in what is essentially a rural community. It’s a demand on law enforcement, the county and city,” he said.

Peter Spencer, the former mayor of Telluride, said that, years ago, people with vacation homes in the southwestern Colorado ski town used to rent their homes to local residents.

But Spencer said that has become less common as property values have gone “sky-high” in the last 10 years. The average cost of a single-family home is about $600,000.

“At these prices,” Spencer said, “if they can afford them at all, they can afford not to rent them out.”

Further fueling the skyrocketing prices is the fact that much of the land in the mountains is public, with a big chunk of national forests.

The rate of people moving to those areas is 12% to 15% higher than new construction, said Tom Hart, head of Colorado’s state Division of Housing.

“From an economic standpoint, this is very critical,” he said. “The tourism industry has become very important to this state. It’s very people-intensive. Those employees have to be happy and positively motivated.”

The social costs are high too.

“You see some social disintegration occurring when people have to commute several miles to work. Who’s taking care of the kids?” said Jerry Smith, deputy director of Colorado’s state Department of Local Affairs.

Kay Philip knows the travails of trying to survive in towns where a $1-million home is considered a bargain. She lived in Aspen for 15 years and now lives in Carbondale, 25 miles to the northwest.

“I moved 19 times in 20 years. Now I own my own home,” she said.

Philip, who works for the Carbondale newspaper, is part of a group of locals pushing for lower-priced housing. And some progress is being made. The developer of a 600-unit project recently was persuaded to price a small percentage of the homes for people with moderate incomes.

“Only 10% of our population is in a position to buy homes,” she said. “That’s bad for the community as a whole.

“When you look at animals and what puts them at risk, losing their habitat is when they’re most at risk. That’s what’s happening to people here.”