It has been five years since Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association closed its coal-fired power plant in Nucla.

That was just a year after the Montrose County West End communities lost its coal mine.

With those closures came the loss of the biggest employers in the area, and the loss of many high-paying, specialized jobs.

Five years later, the West End is still trying to find its footing and determine what kind of economy will form for the area, which encompasses the small communities of Nucla, Norwood and Naturita, as well as Bedrock, Paradox and Redvale.

Losing the energy jobs was devastating to the West End, according to Brock Benson, owner of Paradox Cycle in Naturita, and one of the many entrepreneurs who has built a business in the wake of the power plant closure.

“On a scale of 1-10 (of how bad the closure was), I’m gonna go with a 9,” he said. “Even when the closure happened, it was already going downhill.”

Benson is from the West End. He grew up on a cattle ranch in the area, and his dad was a superintendent at the Peabody Nucla Coal Mine.

He witnessed that mine shutting down, and the loss of jobs toward the end of the 1980s. His mom was transferred to a mine in Steamboat Springs.

He bounced around the state since then, raising his son in Denver.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, he like many others, wanted to escape and get away to more secluded space.

He moved back to the West End with his partner, where he always kept and maintained a mountain property. He had been away, but had always kept his finger on the pulse of what was going on in Nucla and Naturita.

The pandemic brought a big influx of outdoor tourism to the West End, and Benson saw the opportunity to help grow community commerce and a chance to capitalize on the outdoor tourism.

In fact, there have been more than a couple new businesses open in Nucla and Naturita since the pandemic, partially because of that influx of tourism, but also because people like Benson don’t want to see their community wither up. (Right across the street from Benson’s business is the Flying Bear Pizzeria at Naturita Bicycle Co., a pizza shop and boutique bike shop).

“When I moved back home, I did not plan on having a bike shop,” he said. “But I bought our house, and began engaging with the community again.”

He saw a the community shrinking, and struggling as people looked to find other jobs. But many others were spending time on the areas mountain bike trails, four-wheel drive trails, on the rivers and in the deserts around the area camping.

Benson had been a bike mechanic for many years and decided to open a shop.

Easing the pain

Makayla Gordon, director of the West End Economic Development Corporation, has worked over the past few years to help guide the local economy through the changes caused by the plant closure.

“When you have 80 people within your community that are losing high-wage jobs, it’s going to be pretty devastating and rippling effects throughout the community,” she said.

People were forced to change careers, or make other difficult decisions.

“We did see a few people move. A lot of them were moving within Tri-State, and they found jobs elsewhere,” she said. “We had a lot of folks that switched industries or got new skills to be able to switch industries. We had some that were able to go get their CDLs so they could go work for the county road bridge department. A lot of folks also opened up their own businesses.”

Some others took their retirement early.

Gordon said the local agriculture and ranching community has seen growth, as the community has put more emphasis on it. She said a lot of the community went back into ranching jobs.

She said they have found ways to keep lot of the beef produced in the West End, there, to supply to locals, which helps the economy.

She also said the outdoor economy is growing, but the WEEDC is cautious about how they market and promote it.

“A lot of people came out here when they noticed you could social distance,” “she said. “A lot ended up buying homes here. But the thing about outdoor recreation is we don’t have a lot of the infrastructure we need to support it,” she said.

Over the past few years, the WEEDC has facilitated grants through the state. Most recently, they were awarded a roughly $210,000 grant to support more grant writing and increase capacity to focus on programs in the communities of Nucla, Naturita and Norwood.

The WEEDC just recently added a grant administrator job listing to its website.

“We are grateful for OEDIT’s support in our transition away from coal. Lack of capacity and infrastructure continue to be our largest barriers to our transition. This capacity award from OEDIT helps our community immensely to provide more services, support economic development, and to seek out more funding opportunities for our community,”  Gordon said after the WEEDC was awarded that grant.

There have been other grant dollars, and Tri-State gave  around half-a-million dollars when it pulled out of the community.

Those funds are helping maintain the status quo in some areas, and helping make some improvements in other areas.

But Gordon said the communities have also missed out on funds in the past, because they were “match” grants that they didn’t have the funds to put up to match.

Nucla is currently undergoing a much-needed main waterline replacement with some funds.

Norwood is working on drainage to ensure the town doesn’t flood in certain times of the year, and Naturita is updating its wastewater treatment plant that is out of compliance with regulations.

Looking ahead

The communities on the West End are still unsure of their future, or what their main industries will be moving forward.

There is still some hope that mines could open up again in the future, as the West End sits on big deposits of uranium and vanadium.

Those wouldn’t restore the mining economy of old, but they would help add more jobs back to the community.

“I don’t know that it’ll ever get back to where it was,” Benson said. “We don’t know the future of green energy.”

But he’s placed his bet that outdoor recreation will become a major boon for the economy on the West End.

The BLM has been working to develop 30 miles of single-track and build out more trailheads.

He agreed with Gordon that the infrastructure is going to have to approve to support the volume of visitors that might help to revive the community, and they both said the community is concerned with keeping its identity and culture in the face of tourism.

Benson said to keep the facade of the town intact would mean spending big dollars on building restoration.

“My shop is one part bike shop, one part construction site,” he said.

Gordon said they have to make sure people can flush their toilets if they were going to welcome much outdoor tourism.

“I think we’re better off than we expected to be at this point,” Gordon said, regarding the big picture. “We’re not anywhere near where we would like to be. Our transition is going to happen for a long time.”

Justin Tubbs is the Montrose Business Times editor. He can be reached by email at justin@montrosebusinesstimes.com or by phone at 970-765-0915 or mobile at 254-246-2260.