Divided we stand: economically varied, West Slope towns united on vital issues.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: Spotlight: Western Slope - Real estate industry of Colorado

It's a rare rainy summer day in Hayden, a town of about 1,600 in the Yampa Valley on the Western Slope of Colorado, located between Steamboat Springs and Craig. Kathy Matt co-owns Hayden's Timberline Candy Bouquet Franchise, "a delicious alternative to flowers." Her store sells bouquets made of candy, as well as nuts and other candies sold separately.

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The store, formerly a Dollar Rent-A-Car location, boasts two blue ribbons on its bulletin board, awards for both the First Place and Champion Float in the 2003 Routt County Fair Parade. Her office computer, however, bears a game of solitaire on its desktop, and Matt cheer-fully concedes that at times business has been better. "There could be a day with no business whatsoever," Matt says. "On other days there is business."

And if sales don't improve?

"We'll probably go out of business, if it doesn't pick up," Kathy says, matter-of-factly.

Yet the pace of commerce could hardly be any more different just 25 miles east, in Steamboat Springs. It is 1:45 in the afternoon, and rain threatens, but customers are lined up all the way to the edge of the sidewalk in front of Winona's restaurant. A few doors down on Steamboat's main drag, Lincoln Avenue, times are so good the Nites Rest Motel probably won't be a motel much longer. A new owner recently purchased the aging mini-complex, and "starting in August we're probably going to go into long-term rentals," explains manager Jeremy Weil. Eventually, the new owner plans to demolish the motel and build something on its prime location that promises better returns, Weil says.

And so it goes on Colorado's Western Slope, where business conditions and their concomitant attitudes and issues vary dramatically.

Defined as everything in the state west of the Continental Divide, the Western Slope is as geographically, economically and culturally varied as, say, South America, and just about as easy to fit into a convenient category. Durango, in Colorado's southwest, probably has more in common with Steamboat Springs, in the Western Slope's northeast, than it does with Hayden, Rifle or Grand Junction.

That's what Kristy Fox believes, anyhow.

"We're more a mountain town, a destination," says Fox, co-owner with husband Scott Fox of the Winona's and Freshies restaurants in Steamboat. "We don't associate with being very like a lot of Western Slope towns, but we love Durango; we love to escape to Durango."

Not that there aren't lots of issues that...