As a Kansas City Chiefs fan, I hate John Elway with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. But that doesn’t delude me into thinking he’s insignificant in Colorado. Fact is, immigrants make boom states such as this thrive. Between 1980 and 2010, Colorado’s population almost doubled, from 2,889,964 to 5,029,196. News flash: Very few of the newbies were born at the Broadmoor to descendants of Zebulon Pike. Lots, on the other hand, are like Vonn or Davenport—people who moved here from other states to explore the mountains.
We understand why natives are proud enough to buy “NATIVE” bumper stickers. But the fact is, Colorado is most proud of transplants like Vonn, Davenport and Elway. If you can’t deal with that, move to New Mexico with Peter Kray.
Rob Story is a freelance wirter and longtime contributor to Skiing magazine based in Telluride, Colorado.
Native Ground
Now don’t get me wrong, because I completely accept that Colorado’s two favorite “native sons”—John Denver and John Elway, the patron padres of Mile High-ness—did move here from somewhere else. Elway arrived via Washington State, Montana and SoCal, and Henry John Deutshendorf lived in Roswell, New Mexico, real alien country, before he grabbed his guitar and strummed his way due north, changing his name to “Denver,” just to try and out-Colorado everyone else.
Which is really the transplant’s curse, that they feel so compelled to carry so much obvious baggage from whatever East Coast museum, Midwest bus stop or Kansas cornfield that they deserted to come here, rolling in with their Boh-ston accents, Kansas City Chiefs jerseys or Milwaukee mullets, and then still want to immediately start acting like they invented the place.
How? By thinking that if they just get the right props, like a Subaru, or smoke enough dope, or drink enough Fat Tire (you can’t—I’ve tried), then they suddenly get handed the ski pole-gripped keys to the state’s pearly powder gates. I don’t really like those “Native” stickers either, because I do think it’s pretty ridiculous to try and gloat over where your mom gave birth. But I also see all those guys who have lived here for more than a decade still running around in their BoSox hats, or claiming “Jersey Shore,” or freakin’ Dallas of all places, and all I can think of is all of those poor girls with tramp stamps on their backs looking in the mirror 10 years from now and saying to themselves, “WTF?”
