Free in Telluride

Legend has it that Telluride got its name back in the 1800s, when gold miners met with Ute Indians in the midst of a winter snowstorm. “To hell you ride” is what the Utes asserted when the miners wanted them to act as mountain guides through the blizzard. At 8,800 feet in the dead of winter, it’s easy to see why the Utes said “No.”


No visit to Colorado is complete without a stop in Telluride. My mom was born there in the 1940s, back when it was nothing but a mining town at the dead end of a box canyon way, way up in the mountains. Her family considered it a giant step up when they relocated to Ouray, another mining town about 50 miles east but with at least one paved road running through it. Little did they know that in the 1970s, construction would begin on a ski resort in Telluride that would develop into a multi-billion dollar operation. Today it ranks among the most exquisite skiing and snowboarding to be found in the country.

Today’s Telluride is a weird and attractive mix of historic old treasures and oodles of new money. It’s a dog-friendly place with puppy parking like miniature bike racks. It’s clear from the guys in beanies skateboarding to work for minimum wage and the large public school on the edge of the town that there are plenty of ordinary folk who live here. What’s totally murky is how in the world they afford to live (and where, exactly, they actually reside) when a 2-room fixer-upper shack starts at $550,000.

We arrived in the late morning, deciphered the complicated paid parking system and headed right for the gondola. It’s the same gondola for which you need an $85 lift ticket in the winter, but during the summer months it’s fabulously free. You get the best views of the town from the gondola and if you’re lucky, you might catch a ride with one of the celebrities who’ve joined Tom and Katie and purchased a home here.

(Our fellow gondola passengers weren’t famous themselves, but they did share a good story about a celeb. Jerry Seinfeld was recently shopping for a house in Telluride. He told his realtor he wanted to be sure it was the kind of town where he’d be treated like a normal person. The realtor assured him that nobody bothered celebrities here. “When I take you to breakfast tomorrow, you’ll see,” the realtor promised Seinfeld when he dropped him off. Then the realtor went straight into the popular eatery Baked in Telluride and handed out 50 dollar bills. “I’m bringing Seinfeld here in the morning,” he told the diners. “Please show up and totally ignore him.” Seinfeld bought a house the following afternoon.)

I’m pretty sure there are exactly four free things in Telluride. One is the aforementioned gondola. We rode it all the way to Mountain Village, where we found a young, blond, suntanned guy in a fleece vest over a t-shirt (the uniform of small town Colorado, I’m pretty sure) manning a kiosk. At the kiosk was a giant pump bottle and a big basket of gum. Apparently Telluride is the kind of place where people actually get paid to stand in a kiosk and encourage visitors to coat themselves in free sunscreen. When Paul gestured toward the basket inquisitively, the guy said, “Dude, you can totally take some.” My mom got so excited she took about 8 packages. We’ve been chewing our free gum ever since and I can safely say it's worth every penny.

Back in town just a couple of blocks from the gondola there’s a free box. If no trip to Colorado is complete without a visit to Telluride, then no visit to Telluride is complete without a stop at the Free Box. It’s been around since the 1970s and is legendary for producing Patagonia jackets with the tags still on them and barely used pairs of Rossignol skis. I’m pretty sure my uncle furnished his house from the Free Box. After lunch at the Floradora (a $12 black bean burger washed down with a $4.50 pint of Avalanche Ale) I dragged Paul over to the Free Box. I don’t think my parents wanted to be associated with this endeavor because they conveniently disappeared.

I had a moment’s pause. I knew there must be poor, struggling school teachers trying to make ends meet who depended on the free box in a town where a simple sandwich costs $12. But then a very stylish young lady jumped out of a Volvo and dropped a hot pink canvas bag into the free box and I said “To hell you ride.” No, there were no Patagonia parkas therein, but I did nab a pair of Old Navy blue jeans, a black designer label sweater and - as part of my new mountain chick uniform - a periwinkle blue Jagged Edge fleece vest with just a couple of dog hairs clinging to it.

They say the best things in life are free and today, at least, I’m inclined to believe them.