DISAPPEARING COLORADO

But those 1976 Winter Games were eventually held in Innsbruck, Austria, not Denver, Colorado. Why?  Because a coterie of Colorado environmentalists, led by a spirited young state lawmaker named Richard D. Lamm, convinced a majority of Denver residents and Coloradans to do something that had never happened before in modern Olympic history:  to say, in effect, “Thanks, but No Thanks,” or more precisely, to reject spending public funds to host an Olympic Games after having already been awarded the Games.  This rejection, “was a major victory for ecologists who feared vast areas of mountain landscape would be ruined for generations by the Olympics,” according to United Press International.

Half a century ago, the values and priorities represented in this explicit rejection of “progress” in favor of protecting a beloved and besieged landscape by a critical mass of Coloradans made environmental history. Its reverberations were felt throughout the country.  The senior author of this report heard about it as a schoolboy in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  For the first time, on environmental grounds, a majority of skeptical, engaged citizens had successfully rebelled against the schemes of their “betters” and powerful business interests and turned down a prestigious event and related development that would have earned them worldwide envy and acclaim.  Coloradans had taken to heart the lyrics of Colorado transplant John Denver in his 1972 mega-hit song “Rocky Mountain High”: