‘There’s got to be more than one thing’
Relics of Nucla and Naturita’s booming past line their main drags. You can see ghosts of bars, shops and restaurants that are long gone. The Uranium Drive-In hasn’t been open in decades, but its sign still greets drivers on Main Street.
Nucla and Naturita are part of a vast, remote area known as the West End – as in the west end of Montrose and San Miguel counties. Here, the landscape stretches out between the tiny West End towns of Bedrock and Paradox.
Home to just a few hundred people, the town of Nucla isn’t just tiny. It’s far from just about everything. Tucked into the western edge of Montrose County, it’s 350 miles from Denver, 145 miles from Durango and 60 miles from the nearest stop light.
For generations, this area – known as the West End – was a hub for mining. Most famously, they dug for uranium here and the area saw a big boom thanks to the Cold War. Later, coal arrived to support a local power plant.
“You think things are going to boom forever,” said Jane Thompson, a 62-year-old longtime local. “They’re always going to need uranium. They’re always going to need coal.”
Read the rest of this story at Colorado Public Radio.
