In a head-to-head battle, Steamboat Springs sunk Durango on

It wasn’t easy. Steamboat Springs just slinked by Durango with a 4,469 to 4,389 vote in Round 3 of the “mountain town” category. Steamboat Springs, about two hours north of Vail, will now face off against Jackson, Wyoming, in the final round.

Yet, while Durango licks its wounds, the city can take solace in the fact that in previous rounds it thwarted Waterbury, Vermont – home to Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream – and Waynesville, North Carolina, a town whose downtown district “Frog Level” is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The third round was not kind to Colorado cities, eliminating all towns in the running aside from Steamboat Springs.

The state’s Front Range capital city, Denver, lost to the overcast, hipster-haven Seattle, Washington, in the “culture” category. And Gunnison fell to Bend, Oregon in the “river” bracket.

However, not all Durangoans were down-hearted by the city’s loss.

“I strongly encourage everyone to NOT vote for Durango!,” Randall Patrick McMurphy commented on a previous story. “Why would we want more publicity to draw in even more tourists and implants and make everything worse??”

jromeo@durangoherald.com