Split Wood Not Atoms

Affixed to the back of a ’56 Ford truck back in the early 1970’s, this sticker is a declaration supporting firewood over fission, good old fashioned wood heat instead of nuclear power plants. But there’s more than meets the eye. This sticker is really about power. Not the electrical kind that flows through transmission lines, but the political kind that shapes communities. It symbolizes a changing of the guard here in the Fraser Valley.

For nearly a century, Grand County had been a working class, Republican stronghold, even hosting President Eisenhower while he fished for trout in nearby St. Louis Creek. Ranching and logging dominated the economy, with seasonal tourism (mostly hunting and fishing) rounding out the day’s receipts.

But things were changing. Most of the accessible old growth timber was gone, and the sawmill was slowly becoming a mere pole yard. Meanwhile, Winter Park ski area was growing. Some locals even started taking jobs there during the winter when life in the woods or on the bulldozer could be harsh. The first condominiums, “Park Meadows”, came in ‘61, followed a few years later by the first of many hippies.

While these newcomers were surely influenced by the “back to the land” ethic of the time, they weren’t your typical flower children. True, most of them were fleeing jobs or college life in the big cities, tended to be liberal minded, and partook in all the requisite chemical compounds, but their primary reason for coming to the Fraser Valley was skiing. By day, these young men and women hit the slopes, and by night, they hit the Slope or Adolph’s, 2 drinking establishments conveniently located near the base of the ski area. It was one of the more politically aware of these folks who put the sticker on what was even then an old truck.

Needless to say, the influx of dope smoking longhairs came as a shock to the local populace, who had been enjoying a quiet life of relative isolation in a town known as the “Icebox of the Nation.” They sat on barstools in Clayton’s Café and Bar or in the “Bloody Bucket”, Cat Diesel Power caps perched askew on crew-cut heads, sipping Coors and complaining about the freaks. Many of them scoffed at the sticker, for they had spent a good portion of their lives splitting wood just to ward off the bitter cold nights, and no hippies were gonna convince them that atomic power was anything but good old fashioned progress.

Fights between the two groups are the stuff of legend. Packs of drunken loggers and ranch hands would occasionally drive the 5 miles from Fraser to Old Town Winter Park, just to see what those unkempt ski-bums were made of. The peace, love and deep powder crowd, plenty drunk themselves, would surely have preferred to be left alone, but would stand their ground when forced to, matching the rednecks blow for blow.

An important battle took place in the summer of 1972, when the world’s first ever Rainbow Gathering was held a few miles away near Grand Lake. This event, where mostly young, mostly middle-class white folks lived like Indians for a week, was especially troubling to the locals, who watched in disbelief as throngs of psychedelic buses and makeshift motor homes rolled through town on Highway 40 en route to a spiritual gathering that some attendants believed would usher in the actual Age of Aquarius.

Unfortunately for the cosmic seekers, the county Sheriff was not about to let a paradigm shift happen in Grand County, especially on public land so close to the vacation homes of Front Range politicians. Roadblocks were set up on the highways leading into the gathering, and anyone trying to sneak through the adjacent woods was rounded up by a posse of local boys on horseback. The local longhairs, by now familiar with the back roads, hauled some of the hippies into the planned site, but the rest retreated to Granby, where, to the horror of all onlookers, they scavenged through dumpsters, ate leftover scraps on restaurant plates, and loitered furiously on the streets and sidewalks of the small town.

Just then, a local rancher entered the fray by announcing that the big event could take place on his land, free of charge. The locals cried “Judas” but were unable to do anything to stop it. The freaks gathered and partied and prayed, then hiked to the top of nearby Table Mountain to build a shrine. It was a watershed moment of sorts, symbolizing the changes that had come to the Fraser Valley for good.

In the end, the ski bums stayed. Within a decade, many of them were running the show as town council members and mayors, trading all-night parties and wood stove simplicity for domesticity and flick of the switch, nuclear powered climate controlled comfort. The local loggers and ranchers stayed too, but in the new age of destination tourists and cocaine, their time had come and gone