Evergrey
11-04-2008, 01:13 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/us/04cheyenne.html
Cheyenne of Two Minds About Denver-Like Growth
By KIRK JOHNSON
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — This city once dreamed in lofty superlatives — that it could become a major metropolis, axis of the Intermountain West and heavyweight hub of the High Plains.
But by the late 1800s, Denver, 95 miles south in Colorado, had won the contest. Gold strikes and good water supplies made the difference. Cheyenne gradually retreated to its roots as a wind-blown provincial town, dependent on a cold war-era missile base and on Wyoming’s tiny state government for jobs.
Now the Denver area’s relentless growth, with its satellite cities and suburbs that march north toward Wyoming, is grabbing Cheyenne by the lapels.
But maps are political documents, too, and the poll numbers suggest that the same newcomers who have reshaped the Denver metropolitan economy may now be leading Colorado, once-dependably Republican, into the Democratic column by supporting Senator Barack Obama for president. Mr. Obama is ahead in most polls in Colorado going into Tuesday’s election. Wyoming, by contrast, with just over 500,000 people, less than one-tenth of Colorado’s population, is among the most stalwart of Republican states and shows little sign of budging.
The result is not exactly a collision, but rather a kind of accordion affect, like the two-headed Pushmi-Pullyu from the Dr. Dolittle stories. One force is pulling the two states closer as the juggernaut of urbanization shifts the economic and demographic landscape; the other is carving out a deeper separation as most of Wyoming holds firm to its cowboy, go-it-alone ethos.
Change for old Cheyenne, population 55,000, is the one certainty.
Wyoming’s low-rise capital city has long been isolated by virtue of its founding as a railroad town; it was plunked in the state’s southeast corner not for loveliness or riches but because it was midway between the Union Pacific’s other major depots of the 1860s, in Omaha and Ogden, Utah. Now, it is braced for impact.
About 16,000 passenger vehicles cross the border every day, at least 2,200 of them commuters to jobs on one side of the border or the other, according to Wyoming state figures. The Wyoming Legislature, where “mass transit” is seldom heard, took testimony in October from a state consultant who recommended that the state start conferring with planners in Denver who are hoping to build a commuter rail line of 300 miles or more from Wyoming to New Mexico.
“Economics is what we are really after,” said State Senator Michael Von Flatern, a Republican and co-chairman of the Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Committee. “Denver will be a big megalopolis, and if things move forward on the rail line, and Colorado does their part, I would want Wyoming to tie in.”
People like John Brazzale, a 47-year-old electrician from Cheyenne who has worked here and in Denver, say that they think the knot has already been tied. Now it is time for the honeymoon.
“Something’s coming,” Mr. Brazzale said as he rewired lampposts outside the Union Pacific Depot on a recent morning — old-fashioned bulbs out, energy-efficient fluorescent lights in.
“Just look at the hotels that are going up around here,” he said. “They’re not building them for fun.”
Mr. Brazzale, who described himself as a union man and a Democrat, said that he welcomed the change, and that, who knows, in 20 years, Cheyenne could even become a kind of high-tech wunderkind like Boulder, a Denver satellite known for its fancy restaurants, liberals and geeks.
In a hint of that possible future, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, a climate research institute financed by the National Science Foundation, announced last year that its next-generation supercomputer center would be built in Cheyenne. Scheduled to open in 2011, the center will foster interaction between researchers from Colorado and Wyoming who will now have reason to meet in Cheyenne.
Still, Ron Willis is among those who think the old political boundaries will hold, even as things change.
“Colorado is becoming a more Democratic state, but Wyoming will remain Republican,” said Mr. Willis, 32, who runs a state-federal program to help residents weatherize their homes to conserve energy. “I think the two states will remain separated.”
Politics aside, Mr. Willis said that Wyoming still held a monopoly on real Western culture and would not surrender the claim to Denver, regardless of dollar signs.
“Denver has never really been the West,” he said, repeating a commonly heard insult around here that, in rowdier days, might have sparked a fistfight.
At the Cheyenne Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the group’s president and chief executive, Darren Rudloff, said he thought a greater linkage with Denver was inevitable and mostly positive.
The three conjoined metropolitan areas of northeastern Colorado — Denver-Aurora, Boulder and Fort Collins-Loveland — now press right up to the Wyoming border. Taken together, they are among the fastest-growing areas in the nation over the last two decades, with a population increase of about 44 percent, to just under three million people, according to the most recent Census Bureau estimates.
“I don’t think there’s any business resistance,” Mr. Rudloff said. “But there would be, I think, in some quarters, resistance to losing too much of the Cheyenneness — there would be some push back.”
On the other hand, Mr. Rudloff added, many Wyoming residents have already written off Cheyenne, believing that the city has fallen off the map already and into Colorado. “We’re not Colorado and we’re not totally Wyoming, according to some people,” he said. “So we’re kind of stuck in the middle.”
But if geography is destiny, there is perhaps a historical twist as well. Political and business leaders here say the growth of metropolitan Denver’s population north toward Wyoming, which has no income tax, sharpens the business allure of Cheyenne as a commuting destination for more and more Coloradans, making the city a legitimate contender with Denver for the first time in generations and stirring those old dreams of greatness.
Laura Adams, an accountant with the state government, said she welcomed the new economic connections. “It can only help Cheyenne,” she said. “A lot of people still don’t even know where it is.”
But do not get her started on politics.
Ms. Adams, 51, who described herself as a strong supporter of Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, is unhappy with Colorado’s political direction and with the Denver news media, which often serves Cheyenne as an afterthought. After the Democrats held their national convention in Denver in August, Ms. Adams said, too many locals fell in love with the party.
“I listen to a radio station that comes from Denver,” she said. “I had to turn it off. I couldn’t stand it any more.”
Cheyenne of Two Minds About Denver-Like Growth
By KIRK JOHNSON
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — This city once dreamed in lofty superlatives — that it could become a major metropolis, axis of the Intermountain West and heavyweight hub of the High Plains.
But by the late 1800s, Denver, 95 miles south in Colorado, had won the contest. Gold strikes and good water supplies made the difference. Cheyenne gradually retreated to its roots as a wind-blown provincial town, dependent on a cold war-era missile base and on Wyoming’s tiny state government for jobs.
Now the Denver area’s relentless growth, with its satellite cities and suburbs that march north toward Wyoming, is grabbing Cheyenne by the lapels.
But maps are political documents, too, and the poll numbers suggest that the same newcomers who have reshaped the Denver metropolitan economy may now be leading Colorado, once-dependably Republican, into the Democratic column by supporting Senator Barack Obama for president. Mr. Obama is ahead in most polls in Colorado going into Tuesday’s election. Wyoming, by contrast, with just over 500,000 people, less than one-tenth of Colorado’s population, is among the most stalwart of Republican states and shows little sign of budging.
The result is not exactly a collision, but rather a kind of accordion affect, like the two-headed Pushmi-Pullyu from the Dr. Dolittle stories. One force is pulling the two states closer as the juggernaut of urbanization shifts the economic and demographic landscape; the other is carving out a deeper separation as most of Wyoming holds firm to its cowboy, go-it-alone ethos.
Change for old Cheyenne, population 55,000, is the one certainty.
Wyoming’s low-rise capital city has long been isolated by virtue of its founding as a railroad town; it was plunked in the state’s southeast corner not for loveliness or riches but because it was midway between the Union Pacific’s other major depots of the 1860s, in Omaha and Ogden, Utah. Now, it is braced for impact.
About 16,000 passenger vehicles cross the border every day, at least 2,200 of them commuters to jobs on one side of the border or the other, according to Wyoming state figures. The Wyoming Legislature, where “mass transit” is seldom heard, took testimony in October from a state consultant who recommended that the state start conferring with planners in Denver who are hoping to build a commuter rail line of 300 miles or more from Wyoming to New Mexico.
“Economics is what we are really after,” said State Senator Michael Von Flatern, a Republican and co-chairman of the Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Committee. “Denver will be a big megalopolis, and if things move forward on the rail line, and Colorado does their part, I would want Wyoming to tie in.”
People like John Brazzale, a 47-year-old electrician from Cheyenne who has worked here and in Denver, say that they think the knot has already been tied. Now it is time for the honeymoon.
“Something’s coming,” Mr. Brazzale said as he rewired lampposts outside the Union Pacific Depot on a recent morning — old-fashioned bulbs out, energy-efficient fluorescent lights in.
“Just look at the hotels that are going up around here,” he said. “They’re not building them for fun.”
Mr. Brazzale, who described himself as a union man and a Democrat, said that he welcomed the change, and that, who knows, in 20 years, Cheyenne could even become a kind of high-tech wunderkind like Boulder, a Denver satellite known for its fancy restaurants, liberals and geeks.
In a hint of that possible future, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, a climate research institute financed by the National Science Foundation, announced last year that its next-generation supercomputer center would be built in Cheyenne. Scheduled to open in 2011, the center will foster interaction between researchers from Colorado and Wyoming who will now have reason to meet in Cheyenne.
Still, Ron Willis is among those who think the old political boundaries will hold, even as things change.
“Colorado is becoming a more Democratic state, but Wyoming will remain Republican,” said Mr. Willis, 32, who runs a state-federal program to help residents weatherize their homes to conserve energy. “I think the two states will remain separated.”
Politics aside, Mr. Willis said that Wyoming still held a monopoly on real Western culture and would not surrender the claim to Denver, regardless of dollar signs.
“Denver has never really been the West,” he said, repeating a commonly heard insult around here that, in rowdier days, might have sparked a fistfight.
At the Cheyenne Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the group’s president and chief executive, Darren Rudloff, said he thought a greater linkage with Denver was inevitable and mostly positive.
The three conjoined metropolitan areas of northeastern Colorado — Denver-Aurora, Boulder and Fort Collins-Loveland — now press right up to the Wyoming border. Taken together, they are among the fastest-growing areas in the nation over the last two decades, with a population increase of about 44 percent, to just under three million people, according to the most recent Census Bureau estimates.
“I don’t think there’s any business resistance,” Mr. Rudloff said. “But there would be, I think, in some quarters, resistance to losing too much of the Cheyenneness — there would be some push back.”
On the other hand, Mr. Rudloff added, many Wyoming residents have already written off Cheyenne, believing that the city has fallen off the map already and into Colorado. “We’re not Colorado and we’re not totally Wyoming, according to some people,” he said. “So we’re kind of stuck in the middle.”
But if geography is destiny, there is perhaps a historical twist as well. Political and business leaders here say the growth of metropolitan Denver’s population north toward Wyoming, which has no income tax, sharpens the business allure of Cheyenne as a commuting destination for more and more Coloradans, making the city a legitimate contender with Denver for the first time in generations and stirring those old dreams of greatness.
Laura Adams, an accountant with the state government, said she welcomed the new economic connections. “It can only help Cheyenne,” she said. “A lot of people still don’t even know where it is.”
But do not get her started on politics.
Ms. Adams, 51, who described herself as a strong supporter of Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, is unhappy with Colorado’s political direction and with the Denver news media, which often serves Cheyenne as an afterthought. After the Democrats held their national convention in Denver in August, Ms. Adams said, too many locals fell in love with the party.
“I listen to a radio station that comes from Denver,” she said. “I had to turn it off. I couldn’t stand it any more.”
