In ‘Cheap Land Colorado,’ Surrounded by Beauty but Barely Getting By

But what he chronicles in “Cheap Land Colorado” is like the flip side of Aspen’s ascent. In 2017, Conover traveled to an area of the San Luis Valley known as “the flats” or “the prairie,” on assignment for Harper’s Magazine. He volunteered with La Puente, which started as “one of the first rural homeless shelters in the country” and now provides a range of services and outreach. Meeting people who might be eligible for La Puente’s assistance was a more delicate undertaking than simply driving up to someone’s R.V. and introducing yourself. “A lot of people live out here because they do not want to run into other people,” Conover writes. He’s instructed by his La Puente mentor not to wear a blue shirt, because that’s the color worn by county code enforcers, who levy fines for missing septic systems (a common violation). An American flag on someone’s property often means there’s a firearm nearby.

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Ted Conover, the author of “Cheap Land Colorado.”

Credit…

Margot Guralnick

Conover started out living on the property of the Grubers — Stacy and Frank, along with their five home-schooled daughters, a yellow bulldozer and a menagerie of animals — paying $150 month so he could park his trailer by their mobile home. His first night there was in December, and while he was sleeping his generator’s battery went dead, shutting down the furnace. When he woke up everything inside his trailer was covered by a layer of frost. The thermometer on his night stand read minus 7 degrees Fahrenheit — not that unusual for an area that has some of the coldest winter temperatures in the continental United States.

But Conover grew to love the place. He starts thinking about “buying and building,” which he calls “the narrative of the flats.” “Being surrounded by so much beautiful and affordable land made it almost impossible not to think about it,” he writes. The sky makes him feel hopeful, despite the isolation and grinding poverty of the valley. Besides, he still has his home and his teaching job as a journalism professor in bustling New York City. So he buys some property for $15,000. There was already a trailer on site, along with “a well and a septic.”

Conover can leave when he feels like it, though many of the people he meets aren’t so lucky. Their money is in their land, and selling isn’t always easy; a few determined Googlers aside, there isn’t exactly a booming market for harsh living. The annual land taxes mentioned in this book hover below $50; infrastructure is minimal (haphazard road signs) to nonexistent (almost no garbage pickup). Values for the five-acre lots have barely appreciated in the three or four decades since the area was subdivided.