Aspen has looked askance at authority since the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed in 1893. It left a thriving community broken and destitute hoping and dreaming of something to save them. Half a century later it was skiing. Since then residents have doggedly adhered to being the literal and figurative masters of our own terrain.
In 1976, Dick Keinast was elected sheriff of Pitkin County. His law enforcement style was revolutionary in its humanistic bent. The sheriff's department became known as “Dick Dove and his deputies of love.” The Denver Post quoted him, “We can’t enforce all the laws; let’s pick the ones that [county residents] want us to enforce.”
Many locals didn’t believe possessing a little weed for their own consumption at home was a crime worth wasting resources to enforce or jail people for. Keinast agreed. This “radical” philosophy of law enforcement also became the approach practiced by his protégé successors, first Bob Braudis, then Joe Disalvo and further enhanced by our ultra-enlightened jailer, deputy Don Bird. Finally, in 2014, pot was legalized in Colorado. Along the way, the feds continually accused our sheriffs department of being uncooperative in their undercover ops here. Our sheriffs’ answers remained consistent over the years — “Yep.”
DiSalvo once told me, “We have to protect the kids, but the adults should be allowed to make their own choices. If they get into trouble, we’ll be here to help them.” It felt like love in a sheriff’s sermon.
In 1985, Aspen became the first city in the United States to ban smoking in restaurants. According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, an Aspen local named Sharon Mollica with little experience in politics presented the idea to the city council. “I was scared to death when I made my first anti-smoking speech to all those politicians … I hated smoking … No one else in the town was stepping forward to take on the smoking issue. I realized if I wanted it to happen, I’d have to do it.”
Some local restaurateurs were furious. It would ruin their businesses! Restaurant owners in Beverly Hills, where a similar ordinance was being considered, claimed Aspen’s new law was unconstitutional.
The ban went into effect. The country scoffed. Aspen continued to thrive. Today the ban is common sense.
In May 2003, Smuggler Mountain was taken off the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list. It was the end of a battle begun in the early 1980s when the EPA deemed the Smuggler trailer park area unsafe for human habitation due to high concentrations of heavy metals leftover from Aspen’s mining days. The agency prescribed a massively disruptive fix that included uprooting hundreds of residents and removing a thick layer of surface soil on roughly 100 acres of surrounding land.
As reported by The Aspen Times, Tom Dunlop of the Aspen Environmental Health Department was “frustrated with the EPA plan and by the initial lack of interest or resistance from the community.”
Eventually residents of the trailer park came around and formed the Smuggler Caucus. They figured out the EPA wasn’t being completely honest and compiled enough evidence to convince the city of Aspen and Pitkin County governments to fight back.
According to The Aspen Times, “Through a series of legal skirmishes, scientific tests and studies by a panel of experts, it was at last determined that the tailings apparently did not pose an immediate or critical threat to human health, and the EPA backed off … Dunlop said there will be a ‘community delisting celebration’ on Nov. 18, at a time and place to be announced.”
Aspen had gone to battle with the federal government and won, again! Its general was none other than current County Commissioner Patti Clapper.
I remember the poster of a grave digger, shovel in hand, standing by a tombstone with “737” chiseled on its face. I think DJ Watkins has one in his gallery today. The slogan reads, “There is some shit we won’t eat. Woody Creek Caucus 1995.” They are Hunter Thompson’s words answering the Federal Aviation Administration’s plan to make a bigger, “better” Aspen airport runway 29 years ago.
Then, as now, proponents said Aspen would die if Boeing 737s weren’t able to land here. A no vote would return us to the ghost town days. We are a resort town first and must cater to tourists! We need safer planes, blah, blah, blah.
Regarding the FAA, according to a column by Steve Skinner (“Hunter S. Thompson would object,” Sept. 7, 2015, Aspen Daily News) Thompson said, “We will beat them like gongs, sending them running like stupid rats across the frozen tundra. We don’t have the power; we don’t have the money. But we do have the ballot, by God. We’re here for a public beating, and for a change it isn’t us.”
The runway expansion was rejected in 1995 and Aspen didn’t revert to a ghost town.