Aspen

The land around the upper Roaring Fork belonged to the Ute people, who were fighting to keep it when prospectors crossed the Continental Divide in 1879, ignoring the governor's warnings to turn back. Their camp, first called Ute City, was renamed Aspen after the trees on the hillsides. Silver made it rich almost at once. Two railways raced to reach the town in the 1880s, the Denver and Rio Grande arriving first, and in its best years of 1891 and 1892 Aspen was the most productive silver-mining district in the United States. By 1893 it had banks, a hospital, two theatres, an opera house and electric lights.

The Panic of 1893 and the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act ended the boom. Mines closed, people left, and by 1930 only about 700 residents remained — "the quiet years", as the town remembers them.

Revival came with skiing. Soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division trained in the area during the Second World War, and one of them, Friedl Pfeifer, returned and joined forces with the Chicago industrialist Walter Paepcke and his wife Elizabeth. The Aspen Skiing Company was founded in 1946, the world championships came in 1950, and Buttermilk, Aspen Highlands and Snowmass followed between 1958 and 1967. Paepcke also brought culture: the Goethe Bicentennial Convocation of 1949, held in a tent designed by Eero Saarinen, led to the music festival and the Aspen Institute. In the late 20th century the town became a celebrity retreat — John Denver settled there and Hunter S. Thompson worked out of a downtown hotel — and rising property prices increasingly shut low- and middle-income workers out of the city.

Aspen's identity rests on an unusual pairing of sport and ideas. The three institutions Paepcke and his circle started — the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Center for Physics — still give summer its character. The music festival fills the town for about eight weeks with concerts by five orchestras, opera and chamber music, and students who come from dozens of countries; many people listen from the free lawn beside the tent with a picnic. The Ideas Festival brings politicians and writers for a week of debates, and the Food & Wine Classic in June opens the season.

Winter culture is ski culture. Aspen hosted the world championships in 1950, Buttermilk has held the Winter X Games since 2002, and local freestyle skiers have gone on to the Olympics. The Wheeler Opera House, which passed to the city and has been restored, hosts music and comedy acts.

The town also carries the memory of its counter-cultural decades, when John Denver sang about it and Hunter S. Thompson ran for county sheriff. Locals tend to dress down whatever their wealth, to talk about snow conditions and housing, and to guard the small-town scale of the place: new building is tightly restricted.

Aspen is small — about 7,000 people lived in the city at the 2020 census — and second homes have multiplied: more than four in ten housing units were counted as vacant. Prime property here has been rated the most expensive per square foot of any ski resort studied in the world, and even deed-restricted employee housing can cost close to a million dollars.

The result is a long daily commute. Ski instructors, cooks, cleaners, teachers and nurses live down the Roaring Fork Valley in Basalt, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs and beyond, and the valley's bus system carries them up each morning. The county housing authority runs an extensive employee-housing programme for people who live and work locally, and limits on new construction and short-term rentals keep supply tight.

The year has a strong rhythm. Winter brings the ski crowds and the jets at the small airport; spring and late autumn, the off-seasons, are quiet, with some businesses closed and locals taking their own holidays. Summer is busy again with festivals, hikers and cyclists. Through it all residents ski before work, ride bikes on the river trails, and argue about growth, traffic on Highway 82 and how to keep a working town alive.

Aspen's dining is shaped by money and by the mountains. Downtown has a large number of restaurants for a town its size, including expensive chef-led dining rooms, and the Food & Wine Classic each June brings well-known chefs and winemakers for tastings and demonstrations. The bars fill early in the evening in ski season. Aspen Mountain has restaurants on the mountain itself, one of them a private club.

Away from the expensive end, eating is hearty and casual. Diners, burger bars and breakfast places feed skiers, and down-valley at Woody Creek a tavern known for its barbecue and big breakfasts draws locals. In summer an open-air market is held, and picnics on the lawn at the music tent are part of the season.

Drinking has its own history. During Prohibition a spiked milkshake called the Aspen Crud was invented at a downtown hotel bar. Colorado's craft breweries and distilleries are well represented on local menus.