Durango is officially not the best town in America.
When polls closed Sunday night, Anchorage, Alaska, had vanquished Durango in the second round of Outside magazine’s Best Towns competition, a March Madness-style online tournament pitting America’s 64 best towns.
Anchorage received 9,632 votes to Durango’s 9,321.
Durango sailed through the first round, trouncing Mammoth Lakes, California, (population: 8,000) in the Western bracket.
Sheer demographics made Durango a long shot in Round 2. Durango has a population of 17,000. Anchorage has a population of 300,000.
While Durango’s margin of loss – 311 votes out of 18,953 total cast – was decisive, Durango vs. Anchorage turned out to be the closest contest among all of the 32 match-ups in the second round.
“It’s tragic,” said Outside’s associate editor Jonah Ogles. “I was pulling for you guys.”
Durango’s Memorial Day weekend defeat came as a bitter surprise to some locals, who had been falsely encouraged by the 1,000-vote lead Durango established early on during the five days of voting. Durango even seemed to comfortably maintain the lead into the weekend – until the round’s final hours, when Anchorage inexplicably overtook Durango.
Ogles said he didn’t know how Anchorage pulled off its last-minute victory.
“I honestly have no idea,” he said. “I was camping and kind of blissfully unconnected to the world over the weekend. I don’t know if there was any concerted effort on their part or not.”
Asked whether Anchorage’s eleventh-hour triumph could be the result of malicious, pro-Alaska hackers attempting to pervert the course of an online election, Ogles said he didn’t yet know.
“Certainly, we have kind of been trying to pay attention to big jumps like that in case we suspected foul play of any sort. But we really haven’t uncovered anything that a well-organized social-media campaign couldn’t have accounted for. But if you discover anything untoward up there, we’ll look into it,” he said.
He said that Durango’s electoral shellacking was narrow.
“Put in a little bit more of an effort next time, maybe tweet it out a little bit more, share it a little bit more, and that could end up going a long way for you guys.”
An article about Durango’s chances of winning the competition that ran front-page in The Durango Herald last week garnered 355 Facebook “likes,” not enough to propel Durango into Round 3.
Many locals had been rooting for Durango to claim the crown of “Best Town in America.” Jack Llewellyn, executive director of Durango’s Chamber of Commerce, said, “Based on the criteria I have seen, Durango is definitely one of the best towns in America. Our diverse economy helps us to weather the downturns.”
He said winning the honor would be a boon for tourism.
On the Herald’s Facebook page, Cynthia Manzanares wrote: “Durango, Colorado is the best ever.”
On Outside’s website, one commentator, “TreeGoat,” commented, “Durango: Live-able Mountain town. Down to earth. Microbrew for miles. Good people. GoDgoGO.”
Durango did have its detractors.
Writing on the Herald’s website, Mark Mahlum commented, “It was a live and let live place. Since the urban invasion it has changed to an unrecognizable enclave of self-righteous, politically correct and smug “community” with a big California city personality ...”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
