Historic Glassier Farmhouse (2020)

Take a drive along Colorado Highway 82 and follow the Roaring Fork River to Emma, a ghost town that thrived 125 years ago. Emma was becoming a bustling community by 1900, with a depot on the Rio Grande Railroad, a school, merchants and services, and several growing families.

But there is another mid-valley story to be told. It’s just outside of town. It involves a vast valley, fertile farmland, and immigrants from the Italian Aosta Valley. Ranching and farming took hold in the area. Take a hike or bike ride down the Rio Grande Trail, just north of the Pitkin-Eagle Countyline, and you’ll cross the property we’re talking about.  (more…)

Staff and volunteers celebrate a successful day removing old fencing from Snowmass Falls.

What do Glassier, Sky Mountain Park, Filoha Meadows, Redstone Boulders, and North Star Nature Preserve have in common?

Each of these Pitkin County open spaces was once shaped by the rhythms of ranching and farming. Fences crisscrossed the Roaring Fork and Crystal River Valleys to manage livestock and mark property lines, and were considered a staple of rural life when Colorado’s “fence-out” law made it the landowner’s responsibility to keep cattle off their property. That law remains in place, as do many fencelines still used for ranching and grazing across public and private lands. Nevertheless, times change, landowners change, and priorities change. Today, some fences tell a new story: one of restoration, reconnection, and shared stewardship.

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A female Mountain bluebird at North Star.

On the far west side of North Star Nature Preserve, the vegetation closes in like a jungle. Overnight rain still drips from every leaf, and in dawn’s early light, the clouds hang low over the upper Roaring Fork Valley. It’s a part of North Star that rarely sees a human visitor. On occasion, access is granted for research or stewardship. Today, we’re conducting a formal scientific survey of “avifauna,” aka birds.

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