You might call this unusual because Durango has access to a backup supply. In 2011, voters approved spending $6 million to buy 3,800 acre‑feet of water storage in a reservoir called Lake Nighthorse. The rationale was simple: The town could build a pipeline and ship that water into its system whenever dry times occurred.

But since then, not much has happened.

Former city manager Ron LeBlanc tried to move the project forward before retiring in 2019. An engineering study in 2023 concluded that the town should connect Lake Nighthorse to its system using one of three possible pipeline routes. Still, no construction began.

Durango’s mayor, Gilda Yazzie, says the city paid for its share of a pipe at the base of the dam, along with what’s called a manifold—a device that would split water among the four users of Lake Nighthorse. But nothing has been built to connect that manifold to Durango’s water system.

Lake Nighthorse itself is the scaled‑down result of the Animas–La Plata Project, authorized by Congress in 1968. That project would have covered the Animas and La Plata river valleys with canals, pumps and pipelines. Instead, the final plan built just one dam and one pumping station, leaving the Animas River free‑flowing.

That decision helped protect the area’s natural beauty while also attracting more people to Durango. Some of those new residents have since moved into fire‑prone areas. Many Western cities have learned the hard way about not securing enough water to fight wildfires. Fires racing through Los Angeles in 2025 wiped out entire neighborhoods. Water storage ran out and hydrants went dry.

Durango water engineer Steve Harris has 52 years of experience in the field and is known for promoting water conservation. He thinks Durango is making a serious mistake by not connecting a pipe to Lake Nighthorse.

“The city has a century of the Animas and Florida Rivers being so good to them with steady year-around flows that they don’t even know they need storage,” he said. “They may only find out during a water crisis.”

Right now, Durango has 10 to 30 days of water stored in its Terminal Reservoir, which holds 267 acre-feet. That’s annual water consumption for about 600 households; Durango has over 9,000 households. The city depends mainly on the Florida River, with large draws of summer water from the Animas River. When the two rivers flow normally, the taps run. If both rivers dry up or clog with debris from fires, the city could run out of water within weeks.

Climate change and a 25‑year drought highlight this risk. In the last eight years, on 34 days, the Animas River averaged less than 100 cubic feet per second, a low level reached only twice in the previous 120 years. Close calls have already happened. In 2002, the Missionary Ridge Fire filled both rivers with ash and debris and forced the city to cut back pumping. In 2015, the Gold King Mine spill sent millions of gallons of waste into the Animas River, stopping city pumping for a week.

When Harris spoke at a Durango Neighborhood Coalition meeting last year, residents expressed overwhelming support for more water storage. That message hasn’t reached city leaders. Mayor Yazzie said voters were happy to support a $61 million sales-tax–funded municipal building and popular new recreation projects. But she said raising taxes for a major water project would be difficult.

“We are looking at a potential water and sewer fee increase to keep the toilets flushing,” Mayor Yazzie said. As for building a pipeline to Lake Nighthorse and a much-needed new water treatment plant—an investment water engineer Steve Harris estimates at about $100 million—“it all depends on how much the citizens are willing to pay for water. “

Durango’s reluctance to invest in its water system stands out in the West, where water storage is usually characterized as urgent. Las Vegas, Nevada, for example, built three separate intake tunnels into Lake Mead to make sure it could keep taking water even as the reservoir dropped.

Durango’s Lake Nighthorse pipeline remains a paper concept. This winter, with snowpack in the San Juan Mountains the lowest recorded in generations, it’s time the town acts to guarantee more water. Fighting flames with empty hoses would be a sorry sight.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He writes in Durango, Colorado.

The 4^th paragraph has been changed to reflect Ron LeBlanc as the ex-city manager of Durango. Previously, it read Steve LeBlanc.

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McNatt works as an operating room nurse and is a single mother of two teenagers, one about to go to college. Though she landed on the homeownership ladder at one of its lower rungs, she’s relieved. “But this is not how I saw myself approaching the age of 40,” she muses.

The rent on her home lot is $650; her mortgage just $604. Combined, that’s about half of what she had been paying to rent an apartment in Durango.

These days, real estate prices in Durango, as in so many Western towns, have outrun most workers’ ability to buy or even rent modest digs. McNatt, for example, makes $85,000 annually, which places her at over 90% of the area median income in Durango.

A two-year-old study by Root Policy, a Denver consulting firm, showed that single- and two-parent households have begun leaving Durango and southwestern Colorado in droves. Replacing them are retirees and wealthy non-working people. That means businesses struggle to find workers as 80% of people moving into La Plata County don’t work in the region.

Adding to the housing crisis is the boom in short-term rentals, compounded by second-home owners snatching up houses once rented to students at the local Fort Lewis College. Fort Lewis has been scrambling for housing. Starting in 2019, demand for on-campus living skyrocketed, and this August, the college of 3,856 students placed 93 kids in hotel rooms. Thirty more were quadruple-bunked in off-off-campus apartments.

The town thrums with stories of scores of students living in cars and scouting for “safe parking,” meaning places where police won’t roust them out. Others camp out on public lands.

The city of Durango, population 19,400, has tried to help by limiting short-term rentals within city limits, and hiring housing expert Eva Henson to figure out how to create workforce housing.

At a Durango council meeting last month, Henson said that only 169 housing units are under construction, while a thousand more are planned. Finished units for the first nine months of 2022 totaled 59. Meanwhile, a ballyhooed Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) regulation, which would allow homeowners to add “granny flats,” fizzled. Just two were completed this year, and potential builders complain that restrictions remain tight.

According to the Root Policy study, Southwestern Colorado’s overall housing deficit is 2,500 housing units. “Every town is short on housing,” agrees Nicole Killian, a community development director for the Durango bedroom community of Bayfield. Killian says developers plan to build 800 homes over the next decade, a 75% increase in housing units.

What everyone can agree on is that the area’s housing shortage began in Durango, the biggest and most attractive town, then radiated out to every other town within 50 miles.

“Durango has had a sales tax that funded parks and recreation,” says Mayor Barbara Noseworthy. “Now we need to redirect some of that money toward housing.” But the council is divided, with some members favoring a free market approach.

So far, the free market wants only million-dollar homes. McNatt tells the story of two clinical experts at the hospital, each making $160,000, who “have looked for a house forever. And he’s like, I refuse to pay $1 million for a house.” In the end, “they paid over $1 million and are now house-poor.”

One result of the housing crunch, says Mayor Noseworthy, is finding people for essential jobs: “We have difficulty getting math teachers. If you can’t get a high school math teacher, who’s going to live here?”

Meanwhile, one housing solution in Durango has been Chris Hall’s Hermosa Orchards Village of 22 tiny owner-occupied homes, a gem of collegiality. Many of its residents commute to Purgatory Ski Area or Silverton seasonally, and given their small inside spaces, tend to congregate outside on their stoops.

On Nov. 8, there is hope for affordable housing, thanks to Proposition 123 on the ballot. The measure would give grants and loans to local nonprofits to build workforce housing, and provide mortgage assistance to people like McNatt.

At the end of my interview with McNatt, she took me to meet a friend who lives in a storage unit. The box-like space was narrow, his sleeping bag on a foam pad just fitting between a snow blower and a leaf blower. He said he was glad he’d found it.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, CO.

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Learning the Old West code was easy decades ago. Novelist Zane Gray’s “Code of the West” told men to wear a hat only outdoors, to never wave but nod at someone on horseback, and to treat women with chivalry. You — and you were always presumed to be male — were also advised to take your gun belt off before sitting down to eat.

But here we are in 2022, and from what county officials and some jaundiced newcomers tell me, the cultural confusion for newcomers almost always starts with private property. For example, the newbies tend to get huffy about their boundaries and can’t believe they have to fence livestock out.

Wyoming, of course, is a classic fence-out state where cows outnumber people more than 2 to 1. Irrigation is another area of contention, as water law can be murky. A ditch may run close to your property but that doesn’t mean you can take water out of it.

To make the urban-rural transition easier, I’ve collected 10 tips guaranteed to ease you into your new life. But first, know that you will never become an oldtimer, although with patience you might become what Western historian Hal Rothman dubbed a “neo-native.” Here’s hoping this helps:

1. Always wave at neighbors when you see them and make eye contact with everyone who passes you, either in a car or on foot. This is not a challenge; it means you’re neighborly. And be cordial to everyone you see at the post office because you will see them everywhere. You may even see their dual personas, as many locals must work two or even three jobs to pay the rent. 

2. Never go for a long hike with new boots. Take enough water and food for yourself and to share. Bring a rain jacket and sweater and waterproof matches. The saying “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes,” is dead-on accurate. And when someone on a hike assures you that “it’s all downhill,” it’s only partially uphill. “A little technical” means the mountain has hair-raising sections, while “just around the corner” means the end of the trail is not.

3. Realize that nobody is more important than anybody else. Rich and poor may sport raggedy clothes. Notable figures in town are probably dogs; learn their names.

4. Know that it’s considered rude to insult a person’s dog, but if it comes on your land and harasses your cattle, you can shoot the dog. If your dog chases wildlife, you’re in for a big fine and maybe worse.

5. Flashing your headlights to oncoming cars is good form if there’s a hazard ahead, usually a deer, or perhaps a deputy sheriff trolling for speeders.

6. Notice that law enforcement people are not the only people carrying guns, and a gun on the hip doesn’t necessarily indicate political party.

7. Always stop to help people on a trail or road because federal agencies are spread too thin for fast rescues. Locals would stop to help you, even if your hat logo fails to reflect their politics.

8. You might be bored senseless, but you will learn what local public service is all about if you sample meetings from school board to county commission. And immediately volunteer at a nonprofit or two, while also subscribing to your local paper if you’re lucky enough to have one.

9. Clean jeans are considered dress-up.

10. Forego saying you’re pretty good at something unless you have a death wish. For example, in Durango, Flagstaff or Jackson, saying you’re a “good” mountain biker or skier is an invitation to be politely left behind at midday.

Bonus tip: If you think about buying a house next to a yard full of old farm implements, don’t be tempted. That yard collection is permanent. Complaining, however, rarely works in the rural place you’ve adopted. A painful lesson might be that like it or not, you can only change yourself. Wagon wheels are always a safe decoration.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He grew up in rural Colorado.

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Westside’s fate was hardly a given. The New York-based owner, Neal Kurzner, rejected their first offer, saying he had a corporate buyer who owned many trailer parks and was ready to pay $5.5 million in cash. He gave the community just seven days to come up with a cash offer.    

“We knew what was at risk,” resident Darcy Diaz, told me. “But how do you raise $5.5 million?”  

Diaz, who grew up in Colombia and moved to Westside in 2018, knew their only hope was to organize. With a group of other determined residents, Diaz helped start the Westside Mobile Home Park Cooperative.  

It launched a GoFundMe account, opened a Facebook page, and prepared tamales, posole, and empanadas to fundraise for the cause. Then Local First, which supports development initiatives in La Plata County, granted Westside $140,000 in cash plus a $395,000 zero-interest loan, while the Durango community turned out in force, helping Westside raise just over $50,000 in less than a week.   

In the meantime, Stefka Fanchi, who heads up Elevation Community Land Trust, shored up support from county officials, banks and a handful of non-profits. Westside Co-op’s relationship with Elevation, which advocates for housing solutions for working-class people, provided the collateral needed to support the project.  

The result: In just five days, Elevation and Westside pieced together $5.56 million in cash plus closing fees. On March 25, they submitted their offer.  

For nearly a week, the community waited to hear back, with many residents saying they could hardly sleep.    

Then, on March 31, Fanchi said she had news. Diaz and her fellow organizers gathered around a single computer in a neighbor’s kitchen.  “It’s been a really tough week,” Fanchi began over Zoom. “And I do have an update, and that is that we are buying the Westside Mobile Home Park!”    

“They accepted!” residents screamed, crying and turning to each other in joy. Diaz hugged her 2-year-old daughter, and on the screen, Fanchi and her colleagues wept.     

Westside’s success provides hope in a housing market where mobile home parks are frequently sold on short notice followed by large rent hikes or eviction.  

But Westside’s success is an exception. Since 2020, when Colorado began requiring mobile home park owners to provide their residents with notice of their intent to sell, dozens of trailer parks have been placed on the market and only four have successfully bought the land beneath them.  

Now, Colorado needs to pass additional legislation that would grant first right of refusal to park residents, give them more time to submit an offer, and cap the percentage that parks can raise rent. A bill to do just that has been introduced by State Democratic Rep. Andrew Boesenecker.  

Westside Mobile Home Park residents needed a miracle, and they got it. But access to dignified housing shouldn’t come down to miracles. It should simply be the way things are.   

Benjamin Waddell is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a sociologist based at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.

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