There are nine purveyors of recreational marijuana within Aspen city limits. That’s roughly two pot shops per square mile, but in the commercial core it feels like there’s a dispensary on every block. Hunter S. Thompson did propose sodding the streets of Aspen as part of his campaign for she…
Equal parts amused and enthused (and sometimes bewildered) by our local friends’ post-work tales of the trade, we sought to gather and share the best stories of Aspen visitors and their often-lofty requests. While names and specific details have been omitted (for obvious reasons), the follow…
Some say the pandemic has forever altered the retail landscape, but in the financial bubble that is Aspen, new boutiques are popping up as quickly as urbanites land-grabbed real estate this summer. Shoppers can find at least a dozen fresh storefronts in the Downtown core this winter. Here, f…
Ski towns are fragile ecosystems under normal circumstances. Local life-forms are continuously endangered by a seasonal influx of hundreds of thousands of foreign organisms they also rely on for survival. The situation is even more fraught during a viral pandemic, when visitors not only thre…
In mid-March, in light of Covid-19’s rapidly treacherous spread, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis made the “agonizing” decision to demand all Colorado ski areas shut down at once. Never before had the chief executive of America’s most mountainous state been forced to shutter its beloved, emblematic…
Aspen is at a bullet point on its timeline: A global pandemic has triggered a great migration from the city to the countryside, and people are moving to the mountains in historic numbers. It seems a worthy time to look back on those who have done this before—people who have impacted the Roar…
Tasked with capturing the mood of the Roaring Fork Valley amid a global pandemic, three words immediately come to mind: Ups and downs.
Like any widow trying to start over, after Davis Hanson Waite lost his wife in 1890 he relocated. He moved from Leadville to the Roaring Fork Valley, first opting for Ashcroft, which at the time was a bustling mining town of several thousand people, home to six hotels, 20 saloons and two new…
One might assume a knit beanie would be the headwear of choice in a mountain town, but a cruise through the cobblestone streets proves Aspen’s true topper of choice takes a cue from the area’s cowboy roots Everywhere one looks, Aspenites and visitors are sporting a hat of a different shape a…
With people looking to spread out this summer, Aspen parks are primed for a big season. Although we are surrounded by more than 2 million acres of White River National Forest, which offer endless opportunities for social distancing, sometimes the escape you need can be found in a few feet of…
When Sonya Auvray booked her family’s spring break trip to Aspen-Snowmass, she didn’t anticipate that one week would turn into a year. But as the world quickly changed in mid-March because of Covid-19, she and her husband, along with their two sons, decided to hunker down in their Snowmass r…
In the late fall of 1947, two broke 20-somethings embarked on a road trip from Sun Valley to Los Angeles in a beat-up Ford Business Coupe with a pair of wild ducks dangling from the car. The two slept in the trunk of the coupe, paid a cleaning lady at a motel along the way one dollar to let …
"Be OK with being uncomfortable."
It all began with a gamble. On an October day in 2003, Samantha and Craig Cordts-Pearce were at their newly acquired property on Hyman Avenue, set to open in two months as The Wild Fig. Craig was painting the patio trellis, and Samantha had paused from renovations to nurse the couple’s six-m…
“I’ve always been a social creature, and living somewhere like Aspen that I find to be hyper-social feels like a natural fit.”
“The modern forces that are steering the direction of our quality of life are perhaps at a polarizing level that we haven’t seen in a while.”
— Torre, Mayor of Aspen
