Word: minturn
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When Frank Lorenti of Minturn, a rustic little burg down the road from the villageopolis of Vail in the Colorado mountains, put barbed wire up to keep snowmobilers off his property last winter, the town council responded by outlawing the spiked fencing altogether. Police chief Lorenzo Martinez agreed. "Considering the damage it could do, people don't think barbed wire is appropriate," he reported. "There are a lot of other types of fences...
...Lorenti, who had posted NO TRESPASSING signs before erecting his small blockade, the fact that Minturn no longer buys into a sharp-fences-make-good-neighbors way of thinking left him slack-jawed. "No one ever got hurt," says the 13-year town resident. Still, figuring he was waging a losing battle, he took down the barbed wire in June, resigned to the return of the snowmobilers...
Wildlife and rural life are already on the retreat, though, in places like Minturn, tucked under sharp cliffs at an ear-popping altitude of 7,800 ft. Developers, second-home builders and fast-money types view the old ranching-and-mining community of 1,200 as the next Vail or Jackson Hole with a more down-home bent. Main Street is torn between past and future: tin-roofed bungalows abut spanking new commercial buildings, and Volvos and BMWs with out-of-state plates honk at stray dogs...
...This place is no longer just a bunch of hippies," says Bryan Jennings, a station manager at KLNX, Minturn's year-old radio station. "There are ski bums and artists and out-of-towners, and between here and Vail, a heck of a lot of culture and things to do for such a small area. The entire scene is changing fast...
Rebecca Ruck Dunn and her husband moved to Minturn from Vail two years ago. The big draw: they could buy a single-family home for the $500,000 they'd pay for a condo at the Prada end of the valley, where Range Rovers and $3 million villas outnumber cattle and sheep. Growth, Dunn wistfully notes, is inevitable. "But," she adds, "I hope we can grow gracefully. There are resort towns that were in the position Minturn is in now. It makes sense to learn from their successes as well as their mistakes. I'd like to see an effort...