A broken bridge leaves an isolated Colorado community scrambling to save summer (2024)

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Getting bucked off a wild-eyed bronc and tossed into the dirt at the Gunnison County Fairgrounds is one thing. A broken highway bridge is a whole other test of tenacity and toughness.

Gunnison Cattlemen’s Days president Brad Tutor knows the white-knuckle truth of that.

“I am nervous. Yes, I am,” Tutor said. “But I can tell you that we will have a rodeo. That’s a guarantee.”

Gunnison County is digging deep for this kind of grit as it faces a summer with half its main highway access cut off by a cracked bridge over Blue Mesa Reservoir.

Its 124-year-old Cattlemen’s Days and rodeo serves as a high-profile example of how to hang on through tough times. The annual July event has already made it through one seemingly insurmountable crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic. Chutes were wiped down with sanitizer. Bull riders sported masks below their Stetsons. The audience had to be held to a third its normal size. But bucking and barrel racing went on, and the rodeo was televised nationally for excitement-craving fans.

Gunnison County residents, event organizers and businesses vow the same tenacity as they face unprecedented challenges this summer. The county is used to feeling a bit isolated because it sits along a mostly two-lane highway and must rely on larger towns for amenities like Home Depot and Target.

But when the largest bridge over Blue Mesa Reservoir was deemed too dangerous to drive on and U.S. 50 to the west of Gunnison was choked off on April 18, Gunnison found out just how important that lifeline of a highway is — and how too many aspects of daily life can thud to a stop without it.

The closure necessitated highway detours to the north and south that added six to seven hours for trips to and from Montrose. Normally, the drive is about 75 minutes.

“This puts us on an island here,” said Andrew Sandstrom, marketing director for the Gunnison and Crested Butte Tourism and Prosperity Partnership. “It’s pretty sobering to think about how isolated we really are.”

That isolation has an upside. The community has bonded in a scramble to solve problems as residents wait for state and federal workers to locate and repair cracks in the bridge, and to wrestle with mountain snow and muck to improve dirt-road detours around the closed highway.

“We’ll all come together to get through like we always do,” said Hannah Cranor Kersting, Gunnison County’s Colorado State University Extension director.

A welcome detour

Cranor Kersting said when news of the bridge defects suddenly and unexpectedly stunned Gunnison County, action quickly followed panic. County and state officials from multiple agencies began sorting out and dealing with priorities. Friends and neighbors used boats to get kids to and from school. Patients were shuttled and rerouted to continue specialty medical care. Crucial supply deliveries were combined for efficiency on the long detours.

With tourist season now bearing down and news that the bridge likely won’t be passable for months at the least, and possibly more than a year, the daily tests of toughness and ingenuity continue. It has helped that a detour on a county road has been improved and expanded, but that detour takes drivers on 15.5 miles of graveled dirt and 22 miles of one-lane paved highway. Neither was designed to handle the 3,100 cars that normally use the Blue Mesa section of U.S. 50 on an average day.

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The detour is a relief for locals trying to get to jobs, appointments, family gatherings and all the other events of daily life. But it doesn’t solve many issues swirling around Gunnison County’s all-important commerce connections and visitors.

Will visitors from the west — or heading west — still come if they have to make the long highway detour; line up for a single-lane, intermittently-open drive over County Road 26; or brave winding, high-altitude Kebler Pass with its blind curves and wildlife obstacles when it opens?

How will event organizers get the normal crowds in for the rodeo, the annual wildflower fest, for music and food-focused celebrations, for two-wheeled contests, river events and fishing tournaments?

It’s pretty sobering to think about how isolated we really are.

— Andrew Sandstrom, marketing director for the Gunnison and Crested Butte Tourism and Prosperity Partnership

Will major school expansions and a new Crested Butte fire station project be able to move forward on schedule with supplies and construction specialists facing obstacles, and costs sure to climb?

Will businesses selling gas, fast food, and rooms-to-rent along U.S. 50 in Gunnison be able to survive the loss of pass-through traffic? Will tourist businesses west of the bridge make it in the face of a cascade of cancellations?

“We’ll get through it”

Cattlemen’s Days is one example — the biggest one — of a Gunnison institution counting on visitors’ willingness to face some travel inconveniences to get to the Gunnison Valley and its surrounding mountains.

“Cattlemen’s Days has a huge economic impact,” Tutor said.

The weeklong rural extravaganza includes livestock shows, a carnival, a parade, 4-H shows and sales, a horse show and a rodeo. Hundreds of cowboys and cowgirls from around the West roll into town with their loaded horse trailers in tow. They are drawn by the Western Slope’s only Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association event.

It fills every hotel room and campground. It brings in dozens of Gunnison class reunions. It creates lines outside restaurants and watering holes and causes actual traffic jams downtown in the community of less than 7,000 residents.

The annual celebration is also a way for the local agricultural community to kick up its collective heels and take a breather from the normal worries of cattle prices, irrigation woes and feed costs.

This year, the bridge closure has added to their headaches with concerns about getting livestock to summer grazing areas and getting feed trucked in. Many summer grazing permits spread out on land on the western side of the bridge. Long detours are tough on calves. Lengthy travel adds cost to grain shipments.

One local rancher, Lonny Boyd of LB Ranch, told the Gunnison Country Times last week that he has already had to sell off most of his cattle herd. The cattle were on one side of the bridge and their feed was on the other. With the detour, it was too expensive to bring them together.

Until the detour was expanded to allow more open times and larger vehicles, the bridge impacts even sifted down to the 4-H level. Kids couldn’t get their feed from the Montrose area as usual, and fattened animals are important for winning ribbons. The 4-Hers are still worried about getting their animals to Montrose and Delta for processing.

Cranor Kersting said farmers and ranchers have been sharing advice about workarounds. The extension office has set up a ride-share program on Facebook and is planning some local fundraisers for the ag community.

“Ag is a really good example of how people are coming together,” she said. “People are hopeful. We’ll get through it. “

The best of a bad situation

Katie Lewinger, the president of the Rotary Club of Gunnison, echoes that sentiment even though her organization had to cancel a recent fishing tournament that raises money for local scholarships. The bridge outage made it impossible for some of the 60 registered teams to get to Blue Mesa and spread out along the lake.

Lewinger said the Rotarians will make up the shortfall by finding other ways to raise money and to be of service to the community. Last weekend, they took part in cleanups along the Gunnison River and the Hartman Rocks Recreation Area.

Lewinger tempers her dismay at the sudden closure of the bridge. She is not attributing the closure to a government conspiracy, as a few Gunnison County residents have on social media.

“We are trying not to bitch and moan too much. This is better than that bridge collapsing with 20 guys on it,” Lewinger said.

The new allowance last week of trailers and semis on the dirt-road detour has tamped down some of the griping and opened a welcome gap in the feeling of isolation. Around 500 to 600 vehicles are now using that detour daily. Officials have emphasized that the detour is prioritized for locals, but that doesn’t mean visitors to the Gunnison area can’t use it, said CDOT communication director Matt Inzeo.

Workers on the scaffolding beneath the U.S. 50 bridge continue the inspections May 4 over the Blue Mesa Reservoir. The 1,500-foot-long bridge could take anywhere from four weeks to several months after crews finish inspecting for additional cracks, Colorado Department of Transportation officials said on Tuesday. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)(Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Inzeo said officials from multiple state agencies will be partnering with Gunnison County locals to get the message out that potential visitors to Gunnison County can get there. He said the state will be highlighting “all the cool stuff” to do in the area affected by the bridge closures.

That is heartening to Celeste Helminski, director of the Gunnison County Chamber of Commerce. She has spent the past three weeks trying mightily to ease fears among chamber members — while not having answers for them.

“I am glad to hear that others are thinking about it,” she said. “That has been one of my questions, how to share about how cool we are?”

It is also uplifting news to businesses that are seeing a drop in their normal pass-through customers.

Gene Taylor’s Sporting Goods has been selling recreation-related merchandise for over 60 years. Its shelves are fully stocked with scads of rods, reels, tackle boxes and flies because the store orders its seasonal merchandise a year ahead. There was no clue then that a bridge disaster would cut the number of anglers traveling through Gunnison to reach a lake famous for kokanee salmon and trout.

We are trying not to bitch and moan too much. This is better than that bridge collapsing with 20 guys on it.

— Katie Lewinger, President of the Rotary Club of Gunnison

Assistant store manager Cody Rowe is looking for the silver lining.

“We get lots of folks from Oklahoma and Texas. They can still make it in,” he said. “And a lot of locals shop here.”

Tim Kugler, director of Gunnison Trails, has the same eastern-focused promise on his radar. Kugler is preparing for the annual Gunnison Growler mountain bike race at the end of the month and said it is sold out in spite of the bridge.

He said his online map of entries shows, “the Front Range is lit up like a Christmas tree. That is a blessing in disguise.”

Many business owners are waiting to feel the full weight of the bridge impact when “mud season” is over. This current late spring period is perennially a time when the Gunnison Valley, particularly Crested Butte, feels a little empty. Many up-valley businesses close during the slow spell.

On social media, Gunnison County residents are encouraging each other to shop and eat to support local businesses during mud season while pass-through traffic slows to a trickle.

Sandstrom pointed out that the bridge-effect burden is not being felt equally in Gunnison County.

He said Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte are a little less concerned because so many destination visitors come from the Front Range. There is more angst in Gunnison because motels are often booked for a single night, indicating that most visitors are passing through.

Far-reaching impacts

The lives and businesses worst hit by the bridge closure are those based on the west side of the closed bridge — Sapinero, Arrowhead Village and the Blue Mesa subdivision.

The residents and business owners in those communities were some of the first to run into serious problems — and to jump in with aid. They used their fishing boats to ferry kids to and from school, and to help with various other trips that couldn’t wait.

Kendal Rota, who owns Sapinero Village Campground with her husband, Joe, said she was sucked into the bridge maelstrom immediately and is still looking for a way out. She had driven the mini school bus that delivers kids from the west end of the lake to Gunnison schools that day. The bus was one of the last vehicles to pass over the bridge before barriers went up.

She rode a boat home across the choppy, cold lake that afternoon thinking the bridge closure would be a couple-hour inconvenience and she could pick up her daughter the next day after she had stayed in town for a sleepover. Her husband and a son had driven to the Front Range earlier that day. Suddenly Kendal was sitting in their cabin, separated from her family, with no idea how and when any of them would get home.

She still tears up thinking about it.

Now, she has something else that adds to her tears. Their business is tanking with daily cancellations for the cabins, trailers, and camping sites they rent out. She hasn’t yet figured out a way to stop the bleeding.

Her neighbor Jeremiah Proffitt has been making many repeat trips in his fishing boat as he gets his wife to prenatal medical visits and to her job in Gunnison. He has ferried graduates to their ceremony, cross-country cyclists to the east end of the lake and people who needed to catch flights to the west end.

Proffitt predicted as the summer moves into high gear the problems will compound even with County Road 26 improvements and with Kebler Pass eventually opening. County and state road crews hit Kebler early to try to clear its more than 6-foot-deep blanket of snow and its mud bogs to create another way in and out of Gunnison County.

“We are just a handful of citizens and business owners up here in unique circ*mstances, Proffitt said. “I certainly empathize with everyone trying to work out all the logistics of this.”

The tentacles of impacts stretch into other parts of Gunnison country.

Dan Zadra, a wildlife technician for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, has had his hands full trying to work through many ramifications of the bridge closure.

He said mussel testers who would usually be out on Blue Mesa at this time looking for the invasive crustaceans can’t get around the lake to do all their crucial work.

Zadra also couldn’t get fertilizer from Olathe for the hay CPW grows near Gunnison to settle game damage claims. He said the delay will affect the yield.

Antler collections were also a bit stymied by the bridge closure. Collectors of “shed” elk and deer antlers typically line up on county roads before first light on the opening day for antler harvesting. This year, Zadra said he heard there were only three cars waiting instead of dozens.

It’s an inconvenience you always have for living where we do, at the end of the road.

— David Eggebraten, Crested Butte Visitor Center manager

The 3,400-student Western Colorado University has also felt multiple impacts from the bridge closure. It has struggled to arrange visits for potential students. The university’s food and facilities vendors have had a hard time getting supplies from the west.

The school is anticipating declines in attendance at its summer athletic and academic camps. Western’s track team had to spend twice its travel budget to get to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Grand Junction last month.

“But the traffic on the river and trails has been nonstop since COVID, so it might be a nice respite,” said Seth Mensing, a spokesman for the university who works summer weekends as a fly-fishing guide.

Taking it in stride

When Mensing and other Gunnison County residents talk about the bridge closure, few use the term “taking it one day at a time.” They now talk of viewing survival weeks or months at a time.

Highway officials are lately saying the best-case scenario is that one bridge lane could be opened in about six weeks if they can fortify a portion of the bridge with heavy steel plates.

But they aren’t even finished with the testing yet. Less than half of potential problem areas have been examined with ultrasound equipment. Any repairs on the 1,500-foot-long bridge are complicated by the fact that the water beneath the bridge is about 300 feet deep.

Residents have been putting a lot of stock in getting Kebler Pass open early so that the normal link to Colorado 133 in the North Fork Valley will provide another way in and out. Spring snowstorms have been quashing that prospect. Another foot or two is forecast for that pass this weekend.

Martin Schmidt, assistant Gunnison County manager for public works, said they have the equipment, the manpower and the supplies to get Kebler open, but it really has turned into “a constant conversation with Mother Nature.”

Weekend snow could also blanket the County Road 26 detour again. The storm could also stop or hinder testing on the bridge.

“Yeah, it’s all a big inconvenience,” Crested Butte Visitor Center manager David Eggebraten said with a big sigh. “But it’s an inconvenience you always have for living where we do, at the end of the road.”

Tutor, the Cattlemen’s Days president, said the setbacks, the inconveniences, and the unknowns are all being taken in stride by people steeped in the tough historic cultures of mining and cowboying. He said one word rises to the top when he thinks of Gunnison County: tenacious.

Staff writer Jason Blevins contributed to this report.