Reader: We Also Like This Place You Love, and We’re Here to Stay

Lane Newlin grew up in Castle Rock, and the 24-year-old doesn’t like the changes he sees in his hometown or much of the rest of Colorado. He shared his thoughts in “Complaints From a Concerned Coloradan,” which we published last weekend.

“At the risk of sounding dramatic or old,” he wrote, “I am worried about the state of our state, Colorado. People are becoming more divided of late, mostly due to the current socio-political landscape of our country, and our beautiful Centennial State is becoming a gentrified, class-divided mess that no one person can solve.”

And Newlin isn’t the only one who’s worried. In emails and comments on the Westword Facebook page, others weighed in with their concerns about Colorado. Says Melanie:

I want to give thanks to Lane for voicing my same opinion. How many giant apartment complexes do we need in Colorado that no one can afford? Why can’t we spend time and money building places where the disenfranchised can afford to live, to “keep” the flavor of our state instead of becoming a bourgeois collection of over-rich fools stroking their own egos? I have, therefore I am?

Adds Andrew:

If everyone could just simply zooms out. The issues spoken about by the native are experienced by most of natives to this planet. Think about the Native Americans when the colonialists arrived, the unfortunate last Ondigenous tribes in the jungle of the Amazon who are still holding out. For the most part, economic drivers have caused many of those situations.The Great Divergence keeps widening –  but with the current administration, it’s on hyperdrive!

Recalls DJ:

I lived in both Denver and Colorado Springs in the ’60s and the ’70s. Folks were down to earth without progressive ideals or a need for mind-blowing drugs. Unfortunately, the current population got what it wished for, and look where it is now. One can emotionally argue for their big-tent philosophy, but it just never pans out: Somebody HAS to pay. California, Illinois and New York… the same.

Responds Derek: 

Honestly, I’m tired of hearing obnoxious ‘natives’ whine about transplants. It’s not my fault that the town I grew up in sucks, and you don’t get any special rights to the land here because you happened to fall out of your mothers here. People move, all of the time. Grow up, it’s not a good look. 

Warns Tom: 

Lane, how spit on (used to be “spot” on, in the old daze). The wife and I are four miles “up canyon” from Sedalia, and I remember Castle Rock in ’77, when the “B” (B&B cafe) was the only place on Wilcox, other than The Castle. Without regurgitating what you already wrote, the so-called Douglas County Planning group has pretty much approved a 240 unit-condo complex for ‘downtown’ Sedalia… never mind that here’s no water, no sewer and no room for the traffic headaches to come. This robo-insanity promises to Iimmediately quadruple the town’s population and flat-out destroy it, but hey… more coffee shops for the SUV crowd, eh? Yep, as that old dead English guy once wrote (and we were forced to read):  “Methinks the World is too much with us”

Responds Ed: 

Just read your piece on “change.” It sucks…not your writing, but things changing. I’m a San Diego native, born there in 1966, left in 2012. If ever there was a paradise to grow up in North America, maybe the planet, San Diego was it. And certainly not just because of the perfect year-round weather. I hated watching it change, so much so that I left, left a place I was sure I would never leave.

I’ve lived in your Colorado for about six years now, on a city most Coloradans don’t even know exists. Trinidad, one of Colorado’s black sheep or red-headed stepchildren. What I found most attractive about Trinidad was its lack of human beings; they mess up everything. The same people who destroyed my California are right now doing the same to your Colorado. You live up there with all the rich folks, so if you build your walls high enough, you might be able to avoid thinking about it or looking at it.

Concludes Nicole:

It’s funny how people in cities like Denver gripe about transplants when, honestly, every city has always been a mix of people from all over. Think about it – most of us, including those complaining, have ancestors who moved here at some point. Change is inevitable, and often, new folks bring fresh ideas, perspectives and energy. So, yeah, we also like this place you love, and we’re here to stay. Let’s not gatekeep or get stuck in the mud – sometimes newcomers make things better.

What do you think about the changes in Colorado? Post a comment or share your thoughts at editorial@westword.com.