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Show Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, July 15-18, 2006 Tjie Park Record A-8 MOUNTAIN TOWN NEWS What is your Park City / Deer Valley home or condo worth? Icebox of Colorado chilly to old slogan in Fraser FREE Over-The-Net Home Evaluation www.ParkCitvHomeEvaluations.com RE/MAX Mountain Properties SALT LAKE'S FINEST MEN'S CLOTHING STORE Canali Pal Zileri Zanella . Croix £ Ermeneeildo FRASER, Colo. - It's been 33 years since Fraser had a weather station that supported the town's claim as "icebox of the nation." Other locales - Big Piney, Wyo., International Falls, Minn., and Truckee, Calif. - sometimes had the dubious distinction of having the coldest reported temperature in the continental United Stales, but often as not it was Fraser. Radio announcers and Today Show hosts described it as the nation's icebox so often that even after the weather station was removed in 1973 (because local volunteers Edna and Ron Tucker were tired of getting up every two hours to look at the thermometer), the slogan stuck, a sort of local pride at strength in the face of adversity. Then, in 1987. it also lost a court case with International Falls, which had registered the name "icebox of the nation." Fraser can still use that name, but only in Colorado. It does so on the town's welcoming sign. But there have always been those who would rather the town wear a different badge of pride. The Winter Park Manifest reports that the latest push to shelve the tagline is coming from developers, but also town officials. Jeff Durbin, the town manager, says the slogan could make employee recruitment more difficult. He had second thoughts about taking his job because of the reputation the town wears on its sleeves - and stationery. Also, anecdotal evidence suggests that the icebox just ain't what it used to be. While midwinter plunges of 30 below were almost nightly occurrences several decades ago, lately they have become the exception. Still, Fraser has relatively few peers in the Southern Rocky Mountains for cold. The Manifest reports that no decision has been made on the slogan, and at least some people are insistent that the slogan remain. •Winter Park has slipped past Alma as the highest WINTER PARK, Colo. C.G. SPARKS I U R N I T U K E ORIGSA % W I T H R O S E W O O D SOUL BENCH % 40 to70 OFF SALE D. GRANT LTD. at the GATEWAY - Downtown 70 SOUTH RIO GRANDE STREET, ^,< SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84101 $U# ij (801) 456r0600 •www.dgrantltd.com * • > : 454, SOUTH 500 WEST » SALT LAKE CITY • 801.519.6900 - CGSPARKS.COM '•At, •*Mf - With one bold stroke of the pen, Winter Park now lays claim to being the highest incorporated municipality in the United States, The town council has annexed the ski area, which reaches a height of 12,060 feet. Most of the town, however, is at about 9.100 or a little higher. The previous distinction of highest incorporated town in the United States was held by Alma, Colo., located south of Breckenridge. It has a base elevation of 10,578 feet. By Colorado law. Alma is classified as a town, because of its smaller population. Leadville, located across the Mosquito Range from Alma, has a larger population, and is classified as the nation's highest city. The elevation of the city's main street, Harrison Avenue, is 10,152 feet. Winter Park may now have bragging rights, but the annexation was provoked by practical purposes, reports the Winter Park Manifest. The ski area operator. Intrawest, can now deal with town officials when seeking authority, to install new lifts instead of also facing review from the county government. Marketing types do see some possibilities. "We are going to have to look at that in a future marketing deal," said Catherine Ross, executive director of the Winter Park/Fraser Chamber of Commerce. •Bark beetles continue to chew through Colorado SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. The pine beetle story continues to shape up as a major, significant story in north-central Colorado. There, bark beetles continue to chew their way through the aging forests of lodgepole pine in the Vail, Summit County, and Winter Park-Grand Lake areas. The epidemic in some areas has now waxed for about a decade, causing growing worries about the potential of major, so-called catastrophic fires. The concern is heightened by the fact that so many people live so close to forests. In Summit County, U.S. Forest Service officials estimate that 50 to 90 percent of the A Roundup ofyews, $0!p ojper Western ski )soit communities lodgepole pine will succumb to the bark beetles in the next few years, reports the Summit Daily News. Don Carroll, deputy supervisor, said similarly high infestations could occur across the White River National Forest, which extends from the Eisenhower Tunnel to beyond Aspen and northward within 30 miles of Steamboat. One area, between Winter Park and Silverthorne, has 300,000 acres of affected trees. All of this is causing revised local reactions.. A decade ago, most ski towns scorned logging, partly because much of the timber was sold at below cost after administrative expenses were tallied. But earlier the ski towns along the 1-70 corridor this year asked that all fees be waived, in order to encourage loggers to remove the dead and dying trees. . Two bills currently before Congress propose to make it easier to build biomass burners in these 1-70 communities, notes the Vail Daily. The burners would need longterm assurances of wood. A delegation from the 1-70 counties is lobbying in Washington D.C. for a rule change that would allow logging companies to sign contracts for harvest of trees from national forests for at least a decade, according to Summit County Commissioner Bill Wallace. "Over the last 20 years, citizens here have done their best to tell the forest industry to go away," said Peter Runyon. an Eagle County commissioner. "I'll admit that I've been among them. But we're going to have to involve the forest industry in this." "If I've learned anything in the past 10 or 11 months or so. it's that we don't know quite as much about our forests as we thought we did," said Howard Hallman, founder of Our Future Summit, which has a task force devoted to the beetle topic. 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