One of the things I love about Salida is its hip, chill atmosphere. It is touristy, but much more unassumingly so than a typical Colorado tourist town, even other out-of-the-way ones like Buena Vista and Crested Butte. Salida’s roots, like these others, are blue collar. Mining and related industries and ranching, of course. Salida was also a railroad depot town until the mid-twentieth century.
One of my favorite things about Salida is its houses, in the older parts of the town. (About 3,000 residents.) There are few new-recent builds in town, but most of those are on the outskirts of town or outside it. Most of older homes are small, with only a few grand ones. Many are beat up, in need of paint and repair outside, and likely inside. But many, whether well-kept or beat up also have a hippy-dippy Colorado flair.
Here are a few examples to give you a taste. The classic car in front of the first home, a bit beat up and in need of some TLC, is itself on the nose. Also notice the old bicycles substituting as a fence. A number of houses that I saw used old bikes or skis as decor.
Here is a mix of well-kept and beat-up homes. What’s striking about Salida is that they are not in different neighborhoods, with a clear delineation between “poor” or “working class” vs. “middle class” or “expensive” areas. These houses are often next door or within a few properties of each other. Some have grass, sometimes well-watered, sometimes dry and patchy. Some have “desert” landscaping. The tiny, cute last one in this group is not on the street, but in an alley. Perhaps it’s a second house on the property, as a rental, Airbnb, or a guest house (a renovated garage, presumably).
I found the same in Buena Vista, a half-hour north of Salida, a town that is both smaller and much more touristy. It has some old buildings in the business district, some of which are lovely. But compared to Salida, the business district has more new built buildings (stores, restaurants). But it has some of the same qualities as a place where people live (though few people live in town, it seems). A few nice houses, more beat up ones. The first of these, in the images below, was accessible via what seemed more an alley than a side street. The second looks abandoned but has a marvelous whimsical sculpture on the front lawn.
Both of these towns–Salida and Buena Vista–are a far cry from Victor, a declining if not quite ghost town that I described in my previous post. And neither feels as overrun by casinos and tourism as Cripple Creek, down the road from Victor.
Enjoy!
No Ordinary Light 