Reports from the Knowledge Labs about our recent findings, research topics, and interviews with lifestyle leaders who are creating their own futures.
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How to stimulate your own powers of foresight. Consider the following thought provokers. Ask yourself, in these categories what are the brand new trends and forces? Which are the ones growing in importance? Which current forces are loosing their steam? Which have peaked or are reversing themselves? Which are the "wildcards" about to disrupt us in the future? POLITICAL AND TECHNICAL thought for food: Electronics, Materials, Energy, Fossil, Nuclear, Alternative, Other, Manufacturing (techniques), Agriculture, Machinery and Equipment, Distribution, Transportation (Urban, Mass, Personal, Surface, Sea, Subsurface, Space), Communication (Printed, Spoken, Interactive, Media), Computers (Information, Knowledge, Storage & Retrieval, Design, Network Resources), Post-Cold War, Third World, Conflict (Local, Regional, Global), Arms Limitation, Undeclared Wars, Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Governments (More/Less Power and Larger or Smaller Scale), Taxes, Isms: Nationalism, Regionalism, Protectionism, Populism, Cartels, Multinational Corporations, Balance of Trade, Third Party Payments, Regulations (OSHA, etc.) Environmental Impact, U.S. Prestige Abroad. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC Food for thought:
Labor Movements, Unemployment / Employment Cycles, Recession, Employment Patterns, Work Hours / Schedules, Fringe Benefits, Management Approaches, Accounting Policies, Productivity, Energy Costs, Balance of Payments, Inflation, Taxes, Rates of Real Growth, Distribution of Wealth, Capital Availability and Costs, Reliability of Forecasts, Raw Materials, Availability and Costs, Global versus National Economy, Market versus Planned Economies, Generations: Y, X, Boomers, Elderly, Urban vs. Rural Lifestyles, Affluent vs. Poor, Neighborhoods and Communities, Planned or Organic Growth.
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The Journal of 2020 Foresight
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Thursday, June 09, 2005
Trading the Great Lakes for a Mile-High Lifestyle the Utes Left
Chapter Three: The Outpost
By Steve Howard, CKO
The Knowledge Labs
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Basecamp
Chapter Two: The Ridge
Chapter Three: The Outpost
Chapter Four: The Tribal Territories
“(Chief Seattle’s letter) ' The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?"
Joseph Campbell
ASPEN, Colorado. Saying goodbye is always tough. Especially to our local guide. He went out of his way to show us the off-the-beaten-path experiences no tourist would find in and around Denver.
Journal of 2020 Foresight: How did Finnmark end up in a southeastern exurb of Denver?
Pathfinder: From Southern California, by way of Chicago. He missed the outdoors sports and mountain living – hiking, backpacking, and skiing. He grew up near the Pacific Ocean and frequented the local mountains and the Sierra Nevada’s – Mammoth Mountain, for instance.
Explorer: Don’t forget he worked for summers not too far from where we found our first of Grey Owl’s geo-caches
Trailblazer: Where was that? Tom’s place, right?
Explorer: Rock Creek,to be more exact.
J2020F: Now everything is in driving distance? Except the ocean, of course.
Eagle: He told me it was the congestion – how all of Southern California became over developed – that made him entertain second thoughts when he discovered Illinois just didn’t suit him.
J2020F: And what was wrong with the Windy City? The Great Lake comes close to being an ocean.
Eagle: For a Southern California boy, it was the fact that he had to wear long underwear under his suit during the first winter there.
Explorer: It wasn’t the cold so, much, he told me – Denver gets cold. He and his wife just missed the access to mountains. He told me it hit him when he waited to cross a downtown street at a pedestrian crosswalk. A big SUV came barreling through the intersection, hit a puddle and drowned him with gray slush.
Trailblazer: Literally hit him! The slush that broke the camel’s back! All the little things just added up into a general recognition of dissatisfaction for them.
Pathfinder: He and his wife sat down that weekend – at a little resort hotel they both enjoyed -- and answered two questions: “What would you do if you had ten years to live and $10 million in the bank?” and “Where would you live, anywhere on the planet?”
J2020F: And then what?
Pathfinder: They listed their passions and their dislikes. They prioritized their two lists into a common one and then discovered they were in synch on the vast majority of their “Musts” and “Wants.”
J2020F: So they transferred their jobs to a better quality of life location?
Eagle: That was the hard part. They took a big risk. They gambled that they could both find jobs to support their lifestyle in a climate and geographical location where they’d be happy.
Trailblazer: But, it was a calculated risk. They did their homework and tapped into their “Birds of a Feather” – tribal connections, if you will, ahead of time.
J2020F: By that you mean, what?
Explorer: Finnmark knitted together a small group of like-minded people – The Colorado Expedition – for the soul purpose of trading inside information and referrals to sources of business intelligence and introductions needed to make the best life decision they could.
Trailblazer: And, they took several scouting trips – some on business trips, some on vacations to confirm what they had researched. They double-checked advice they had received from family, friends and new “expedition members” along the way.
Eagle: In fact, it was from his pioneering work that we started to notice the connections among Dana Point, California and Pagosa Springs, Colorado and Parker, Colorado.
J2020F: He was telling me he helped you flesh out the “Lone Eagle / Doing What You Love” scenarios, right?
Eagle: He went from doing what he liked, but didn’t love in a location he didn’t love to a struggling lone eagle.
Explorer: They set up their own outpost by renting outside of the Denver urban area while they explored where they want to live. As it turned out, Finnmark’s wife lands a job she loves first.
Eagle: And in a few months both begin living the staying put (in ideal location) doing what you love scenarios.
J2020F: And when was this? Before 9/11?
Explorer: At least a decade before.
J2020F: Wasn’t he in the telecom industry, though? I remember him saying something about the roller coaster of ups and downs in the local Denver job market.
Pathfinder: Finnmark took me aside and told me he’s more recently fallen into a version of the trapped and permanently temporary scenario and is more seriously considering struggling lone eagle options.
Trailblazer: But, knowing about the volatility in today’s world, he had anticipated the probabilities each scenario suggested, and has put together a much better game plan.
Explorer: He told me he wouldn’t mind helping in the next revision -- updating the scenarios to reflect events after the terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq and projecting past 2010.
Pathfinder: For those of us putting together five-year life and financial plans.
J2020F: So for different reasons, roughly 12 decades after gold fever attracted so many mid-westerners and easterners to Denver, Finnmark and his wife found what they had been looking for in Parker – the rugged natural beauty that attracted the original people to the region.
Eagle: And, from their pioneering work, we drew heavily on what Finnmark shared with us to plot the migration profiles, remember?
Trailblazer: Sure, we determined that Parker had promise because of the presence of the more affluent lifestyle clusters Harry Dent described.
Eagle: Except for deciding not to have children, Finnmark fits the broad blend of Landed Gentry and Elite Suburbs social groups.
J2020F: How can you tell about the fit?
Eagle: You can check out the community profiles, – in Finnmark’s case, the Country Squires and God’s Country executive profiles show up in Parker’s neighborhoods, according to Claritas PRIZM segmentation.
J2020F: Explain.
Trailblazer: When you visit the Claritas website, click on "You Are Where You Live" button, then choose PRIZM in the drop down menu and search on Parker’s zip code – 80134. You’ll see that Elite Suburbs social group represents one of the most affluent and well-educated clusters – high in education attained, investments and spending.
J2020F: And Landed Gentry?
Trailblazer: They’re the fourth most affluent with multiple incomes from executive, professional and technology-related knowledge workers. They prefer to live in the exurbs – beyond the suburbs and dense urban areas.
J2020F: And the Country Squires and God’s Country?
Trailblazer: Both yearn to escape urban stress and prefer to live away from the city. Country Squires have been called “big bucks in the boondocks” by Claritas. God’s Country neighborhoods apply their dual incomes to support an active, outdoor lifestyle.
Eagle: You can see the fit that Finnmark and his wife found when they first moved to Parker many years ago. But over time, what once was exurban now becomes suburban, and almost urban as communities mature.
Trailblazer: If they had to do it over again, they might check out Parker’s 2025 Master Plan to decide if there was as much fit as they had anticipated.
Explorer: In the long term Finnmark said he wouldn’t mind living off the grid – becoming more self-sufficient like in the Lone Eagle scenarios. If he moved he’d probably look other exurb areas north, northwest and west of Denver.
Eagle: He told me the same thing. So the next Colorado Expedition might explore where the historic overland trail linked together fur trading posts, pony express and stagecoach stations in the Platte River region beyond Julesburg.
Pathfinder: I love the Julesburg story.
Explorer: Julesburg provided the backdrop to Mark Twain’s account of Jack Slade as a good guy-turns-outlaw-murderer.
Pathfinder: In addition to being an overland stage station, it burned to the ground.
Eagle: Nearby soldiers from Fort Sedgwick (where Kevin Costner’s character gets assigned in “Dances With Wolves”) couldn’t prevent the burning of Julesburg by the Sioux and Cheyenne in retaliation for the Sand Creek Massacre in November of 1863.
Explorer: Following along the string of forts, Finnmark’s expedition might investigate the area near historic Fort Vasquez where Andrew Sublette and Baptiste Charbonneau (son of Sacagawea – guide to Lewis and Clark), Jim Beckworth and Louis Vasquez traded furs, or Fort Morgan, Fort St. Vrain (near present day Greeley where Rope Thrower Kit Carson and John Fremont stopped on one of their Rocky Mountain expeditions in 1848).
Eagle: Or by Fort Collins (where we find the legend of Antoine Janis and his fur trading exploits along the Cache La Poudre River) or on to Denver, but closer to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.
Trailblazer: Actually, I believe he’d be more interested in the I-70 corridor heading west. He’d probably target towns branching off on smaller road tributaries to the north and south.
Explorer: Which, as it turns out, is where we headed.
J2020F: We had said our goodbyes outside the Parker bike shop, stopped in at the local market and stocked up for the return leg of our journey, the northern route. We skirted around the southwestern edge of Denver on the interstate until we got to I-70 and the ski resorts.
Explorer: There we found the beginning of Colorado’s favorite mountain resorts beginning with exits to Loveland Pass into the Arapaho Basin.
Trailblazer: U.S. Highway 6 traverses Loveland Pass, one of Colorado’s high Rocky Mountain passes on the Continental Divide
Eagle: Highway 6? Here’s a factoid – in years past it was the only highway connecting Cape Cod on the east coast with Bishop, California on the left-coast.
J2020F: And here’s the next factoid. We passed through Summit County – home to “Colorado’s favorite mountain resort, Breckenridge– and Frisco, Dillon, Silverthorne, Keystone and Copper Mountain.
Eagle: All potential towns for Finnmark’s consideration.
Pathfinder:
Breckenridge’s history is odd, I think.
J2020F: Why?
Pathfinder: Well, it starts out like the typical Colorado story. By 1861, 2 years after gold was first panned from the Blue River, Breckenridge had become a booming settlement.
J2020F: So? Breckenridge is one of Colorado's oldest continuously occupied mining towns.
Pathfinder: The town takes its name from Vice President John C. Breckinridge.
J2020F: A lot of town’s get their name from famous politicians.
Pathfinder: But look at how his name was spelled.
J2020F: You mean the “i” instead of the “e”?
Pathfinder: Exactly. You see Breckinridge was an unsuccessful candidate for President in 1860, losing to Abraham Lincoln. He served in the U.S. Senate until expelled by resolution in 1861.
J2020F: And?
Pathfinder: Breckinridge became a brigadier general for the Confederacy during the Civil War and later served as their Secretary of War.
Explorer: How did the town come down on North versus South?
Pathfinder: A number of local citizens joined the Confederate Army. But, those who stayed behind, however, showed their sympathies by changing the town's name to the northern spelling of Breckenridge.
J2020F: After stopping for about a half an hour at Copper Mountain -- which was in its post ski season state of repair— we reconsidered our plans.
Eagle: And we quickly realized that if we’re going to stay on schedule we have to get to Vail, first for lunch, in Eagle County -- and then on to the Lamplight Inn in Aspen.
Pathfinder: I’m surprised that the villages of Vail edge along the interstate.
Trailblazer: Me, too. I was disappointed comparing the location to the mental picture I had carried for years visualizing what the famous Vail resort would be like.
J2020F: Lots of shops. That’s what I pictured, so I wasn’t disappointed. During lunch we picked up brochures for the typical Colorado adventures during the summer. We also checked out condos for a return trip.
Trailblazer: It says here --Vail, internationally known for skiing and its Alpine-style village -- offers year round access to recreation in the surrounding White River National Forest.
Pathfinder: The town owes its development to the ski paratroopers who had trained during World War II in the vicinity.
Trailblazer: In Vail and, for that matter, in the --whole Beaver Creek Mountain area you can go ballooning, take a gondola or chairlift ride, cruise around town on bikes, or hit the mountain trails.
Eagle: I noticed you can also play golf or tennis or try your hand at fly-fishing.
Explorer: What about river rafting? What’s a trip to Colorado without river rafting or 4-wheel driving into the backcountry?
J2020F: Or boating, kayaking, camping hiking, going for a carriage ride, visiting a museum or a nature center, for that matter.
Pathfinder: You can paraglide, ride the range or go rock climbing. Or you can shop until you drop.
J2020F: Who wouldn’t want to live here? The average price for a single-family or duplex home in Eagle County was $601,801 in August 1997 – --who knows what they go for today?
Trailblazer: Too little, too late. That’s why it is on Finnmark’s mature list.
Explorer: And the same for Steamboat Springs.
Pathfinder: As the Steamboat story goes James Crawford was attracted to the Yampa River Valley in 1874 by reports of idyllic scenery and a mild climate. Impressed by the magnificence of this valley of springs, Crawford built his cabin on the west bank of Soda Creek.
Eagle: So they didn’t decide to name the town Crawford and then change it to Crawfort?
Pathfinder. Very funny. Legend has it that the fledgling settlement was named Steamboat Springs because of the rhythmic chugging of the hot spring near the river, from which mineral water spewed 15 feet into the air. In the immediate vicinity there are 157 mineral springs, both medicinal and recreational, composed of alkali, salt, iron, lithia, sulfur, magnesia and other minerals.
Explorer: It’s still too expensive for me. And the same for Aspen – the county seat of Pitkin County.
J2020F: Pitkin? Frederick Pitkin? The one who made a fortune in the San Juan Mountains?
Explorer: The one and the same. In the 1870s, it seemed logical that the gold and silver veins that were yielding fortunes in Ouray (the town) on the east slope of the Uncompahgre Range also would show on the west side.
Pathfinder: After the Brunot secured the treaty with Chief Ouray, the subsequent claims staked in 1875 on the mountainsides above the headwaters of the San Miguel proved the premise.
Trailblazer: Columbia, the supply camp at the bottom of the narrow gorge, soon changed its name to Telluride after tellurium, the non-metallic matrix in which the precious metals appeared.
J2020F: So Pitkin must have been on a roll.
Pathfinder: Right, Pitkin had used his power to become governor of Colorado when it became a state in 1876
Eagle: After the end of the Sioux wars in 1877 Pitkin and William B. Vickers, a Denver editor-politician who despised all Indians, especially Utes, began drumming up a propaganda campaign to have all Utes exiled to Indian Territory, thus leaving an immense amount of valuable land free for the taking.
Pathfinder: They used a federal policy to their advantage.
J2020F: How?
Pathfinder: The great father, President Grant, pursued a stated "Peace Policy" as a possible solution to conflicts between whites and Indians.
J2020F: In what way?
Pathfinder: The policy included a reorganization of the Indian Service, with the goal of relocating various tribes from their ancestral homes to parcels of lands established specifically for their inhabitation.
Eagle: And here’s the kicker. The policy called for the replacement of government officials by religious men nominated by churches to oversee the Indian agencies on reservations in order to teach Christianity to the native tribes.
Explorer: The Quakers were especially active in this policy on reservations.
Eagle: So, that accounts for Wovoka’s hybrid religion – the influence of the Christian Indian agencies.
Explorer: What Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy had referenced in defense of the spreading Ghost Dance -- "If the Seventh-day Adventists got up on the roofs of their houses in their ascension robes to welcome the Second Coming of Christ, the whole U.S. Army is not rushed into motion."
Pathfinder: The "civilization" policy was aimed at the eventually preparing the tribes for citizenship.
Explorer: So, in 1878 a new agent upsets the turnip truck for the – thanks to a debt owed to Horace Greeley, the butt of Mark Twain’s running gag in “Roughing It.”
J2020F: You mean Nathan Meeker and the Greeley -- the Union Colony?
Explorer: Right. Nathan Meeker, after a couple of trips to Colorado founded Union Colony near Fort Latham and the fork of the South Platte River because of the area’s agriculture potential.
Eagle: The Utes went along with the treaty that Chief Ouray negotiated, but they only humored their agents at Los Pinos and White River by going through the agriculture motions.
Pathfinder: That’s true. They were self-supporting and didn’t want or need the provisions dole out to them though the reservation system.
Trailblazer: Then Meeker came along, where was it, at White River?
Explorer: Meeker owed Greeley a large debt after the majority of his cooperative agrarian colonies – utopias – failed. While Greeley favored the ventures, Meeker needed the agency income to pay off what he owed.
Eagle: While he might have had the best of intentions, he came across as someone who was out to destroy everything to do with the Ute way of life.
Pathfinder: One of his first mistakes was to move the Agency near present day Greeley to establish the Union Colony – right in the middle of the area the Utes used for hunting and racing their ponies.
J2020F: What happened?
Pathfinder: The chiefs told Meeker he violated the treaties they signed. Nothing mentioned relocating the agency.
Explorer: While Chief Colorow had missed visiting down town Denver when they were moved to the White River – dining in restaurants, attending theaters and clowning for white citizens –he really enjoyed hunting in the White River country.
Eagle: Dee Brown says Meeker soon realized that his mission to convert the savages to civilized ways was surely doomed, “because their needs are so few.”
J2020F: So he couldn’t make them dependent.
Pathfinder: Exactly. So he decided he might succeed if he could take away their ponies to keep them from roaming on hunting trips.
Eagle: And then he planned to “replace the ponies with a few draft horses for plowing and hauling, and then as soon as the Utes were thus forced to abandon the hunt and remain near the agency, he would issue no more rations to those who would not work. 'I shall cut every Indian down to the bare starvation point,' he wrote Colorado's Senator Henry M. Teller, 'if he will not work.' "
J2020F: Wasn’t he a reporter originally? And didn’t he contribute articles to newspapers?
Explorer: He reminds me of Mark Twain, in a way, except Twain would never take on Agency work with such missionary fever.
Eagle: Good points. Brown writes, like Twain, "Meeker's inveterate itch for writing down his ideas and observations, and then sending them off to be put into print, eventually brought him to a complete breaking point with the Utes.”
J2020F: Oh, how so?
Eagle: During the spring of 1879 he wrote an imaginary dialogue with one of the Ute women, attempting to show how the Indians could not comprehend the joys of work or the value of material goods.... This little composition was first published in the "Greeley Tribune."
Pathfinder: Guess who read it?
J2020F: Picken?
Pathfinder: Close. No, Vickers saw it.
Explorer: Vickers saw Meeker’s piece as an argument for removing the Utes from Colorado, so he wrote an article about it for the "Denver Tribune
Eagle: And, it didn’t stop there. Vickers wrote considerably more, and his article was reprinted across Colorado.
J2020F: Like what?
Pathfinder: Of all things, while Meeker had tried and failed at establishing Utopian communities because the Utes resisted – the Utes were branded as communists.
Eagle: Here’s how Brown described it: “'The Utes are actual, practical Communists and the government should be ashamed to foster and encourage them in their idleness and wanton waste of property. Living off the bounty of a paternal but idiotic Indian Bureau, they actually become too lazy to draw their rations in the regular way but insist on taking what they want were ever they find it. Removed to Indian Territory, the Utes could be fed and clothed for about one half what it now costs the government.' "
Trailblazer: He succeeded in branding the campaign with the headline: The Utes Must Go!
Eagle: And bad went to worse.
J2020F: You mean a chain of events was set in motion?
Eagle: Brown says, “Meanwhile, William Vickers was accelerating his 'Utes Must Go' campaign by manufacturing stories of Indian crimes and outrages."
Pathfinder: And, Meeker appealed to Governor Pitkin for assistance when Chief Johnson resisted an order to kill his horses and allow the resumption of plowing his pasture.
Eagle: Literally, push came to shove. Johnson shoved Meeker in anger, but then walked away.
Explorer: The incident convinced Meeker that the Utes needed to be taught a lesson. Deteriorating relations deteriorated further.
J2020F: Pitkin sends in the troops?
Pathfinder: You bet. Shots are fired as both sides – soldiers and Indians – had tried to de-escalate a confrontation.
Eagle: But, word of the violent confrontation reaches the Utes at White River – they’re told the soldiers were fighting their people. So about “dozen of them took their rifles and went out among the agency buildings shooting at every white workman in sight. Before the day ended they killed Nathan Meeker and all his white male employees."
Explorer: And like dominoes falling one after another, local militia took up arms in town after town to protect their families.
J2020F: So, except for a few Southern Utes the state of Colorado was wiped clean of Indians?
Eagle: Basically. Dee Brown described it this way, “"Vickers called upon the white citizens of Colorado to rise up and 'wipe out the red devils,' inspiring the frantic organization of militia units in towns and villages across the state. So many newspaper reporters arrived from the East to report this exciting new 'Indian War' that Governor Pitkin decided to give them a special statement for publication.”
J2020F: A special statement?
Eagle: “I think the conclusion of this affair will end the depredations in Colorado. It will be impossible for the Indians and whites to live in peace hereafter. This attack had no provocation and the whites now understand that they are liable to be attacked in any part of the state where the Indians happen to be in sufficient force. My idea is that, unless removed by the government, they must necessarily be exterminated. I could raise 25,000 men to protect the settlers in twenty-four hours. The state would be willing to settle the Indian trouble at its own expense."
J2020F: So that was that?
Pathfinder: Chief Ouray, on his deathbed in 1880, tried to argue his tribes case in Washington D.C., but to no avail.
Eagle: Brown writes, “It was decided 'the Utes must go' to a new reservation in Utah -- on land the Mormons did not want. Ouray died before the Army herded his people together in August 1881, for the 350-mile march out of Colorado into Utah."
J2020F: So the names remain, but it’s not the same!
Eagle: Brown sums it up by saying: "Except for a small strip of territory along the southwest corner -- where a small band of Southern Utes was allowed to live -- Colorado was swept clean of Indians. Cheyenne and Arapaho, Kiowa and Comanche, Jicarilla and Ute -- they had all known its mountains and plains, but no trace of them remained but their names on the white man's land."
J2020F: Looks like the dark clouds are gathering, so we better get on the road again!
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Copyright ©2002 - 2006 Aarnaes Howard Associates. All rights reserved worldwide.
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