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Paradox Valley, Colorado

The Half-Life of Belonging

By Jen Jackson

It is an expansive landscape, one that dwarfs the tiny communities it cradles. Two thousand-foot red cliffs frame a valley floor of alternating sage and range. Utah's La Sal Mountains tower above the west end of the valley, and the jagged crest of the San Juan Mountains - with Lone Cone as its most prominent tooth - stand sentinel on the eastern horizon. This is a valley of vastness, of deceiving distances. And there is a strange intimacy in its immensity. It's that sense of returning as an adult to a place one knew as a child: Perspective and memory do not align, but familiarity remains. The Paradox Valley is reminiscent of my redrock home in Utah; but everything - sky and seclusion, cliffs and distance - is magnified.

This five-mile-wide, 25-mile-long valley on Colorado's western edge arrived at its unique name - Paradox - thanks to an idiosyncratic Dolores River that meanders across the valley instead of through it, punching into towering walls at both ends. In a sense, the Dolores is a metaphor for the breed of quixotic and stubborn soul that has chosen to call the Paradox Valley home over the last century. Many barriers stand in the way of making a home here, but residents persevere.
There exists the path of least resistance; and then, there is the road to Paradox.

Today, the valley has a bucolic feel, offering a New West mix of grazing cattle and speedy tourists zipping between Telluride and Moab. But a rich vein of memory lies close to the surface here. Paradox has not forgotten its roots.
The valley was originally settled in the 1870s and 1880s for its rangeland. Intrepid cowboys quickly gave way to large ranching outfits that battled it out - sometimes through objectionable and underhanded means - for land and water rights. Three large ranches remain in the Paradox Valley, a lasting legacy from the area's wilder days. Cattle, to a certain extent, have been Paradox's constant, forming the foundation of its why and how.
Thanks in part to early rangeland battles, this rugged desert outpost was once known as the "Slaughterhouse of the West," and a book on its history is titled The Hell that Was Paradox. One author opined that the region "contained about as many outlaws and men on the ?dodge' as it did solid citizens."
The region's topography and geography produced a haven for turn-of-the-century outlaws. Thanks to the surrounding mountains and rimrock country, ingress and egress were difficult. Its remote location on the Utah border also left it as a place largely ignored by the law. One pioneer family was rumored to have kept fleet horses on hand specifically for outlaws needing a change in mounts. The tariff for such a service was based on the desperation of the man on the run.
Murder was common in the early days, usually related to disputes over money, mining, water or land. One young cowboy was killed by his friends who then helped themselves to his brand new boots. A beloved schoolteacher was murdered with a hammer by his brother. Only after his death was it determined that the teacher was actually an ex-convict on the lam. A pioneer wife shot her husband when her temper flared over his drinking habit.
The defining story of this now-quiet valley is that of Lemuel "Slim" Hecox, the murdered watchman of the nearby Cashin copper mine. Slim had a penchant for flaunting his money and bragging of his sharpshooting prowess - a dangerous combination in the Wild West. In 1921, he was ultimately shot from behind by a gang of men who stole his money, decapitated him and buried his head miles away. This was just the beginning of a reign of terror the gang had planned for the Paradox Valley.
Everyone I speak with in Paradox begins with this story. They all give me a practiced and knowing glance - one that says, "You may not want the details, but I'm gonna give 'em to you anyway." - before weaving the tale at the doorstep of my rapt attention. The Hecox story is the welcome mat that area residents offer up to visitors - one that leaves the listener feeling as if she's arrived in the Wild West while also keeping the harder questions of current community identity, purpose and direction at bay.
Everyone has his or her own spin on the grisly details: the condition of the head when it was found, how the head was ultimately reunited with the body in the casket, and how the bloody stump of the neck may or may not have been covered in oats (the body was hidden in the grain bin), which may or may not have been sprouting in that flesh, and how chickens might have been eating sprouted oats from the body, and old men or young boys may have come upon that scene - intentionally or unintentionally - and they might have vomited on the spot. Or endured nightmares. Or they may simply have refused to eat eggs from those chickens for weeks. The diversity of details is almost more macabre than the actual story itself.
"I just wish the headstones could talk," muses Lynda Ayers, a lifelong resident of Paradox. She is 75 years old. Her late husband's family was among the first to settle in the valley. Ayers holds the history of this place as marrow within her bones: something essential, inborn, soft and protected. She - like everyone - begins with the Slim Hecox story, and I recognize I have not yet earned access to the deeper vein of memory.
"There was terror reigning in this valley something terrible," she says, recounting the scheme hatched by Hecox's murderers before their arrest. The men had planned to bring a motion picture to town - a novelty that would have attracted the whole community. Once everyone was packed into the schoolhouse, the gang would have slaughtered the townsfolk, collected their valuables, and essentially owned the valley as outlaws.
This tale is Paradox's unorthodox welcome mat. But it is not what makes this place home to so many fiercely loyal residents. The identity of Paradox is deeper than its graves, deeper than the uranium and copper mines surrounding it, deeper than history and memory. I see it in Lynda Ayers' eyes and posture. She is not just in this place; she is of it. And seeing this, I know I may never know home in such a deep sense.

Gilbert Eades moved to the Paradox Valley from Oklahoma 75 years ago. At 20 years old, he escaped the Dust Bowl for better ranching opportunities out West. He soon met Dot, a local girl who has been his bride for nearly 70 years.
Gilbert's face and stature do not belie his age. Though he has been retired for 30 years now, he still tirelessly tends his Paradox acreage - trimming trees, weeding, planting. The only thing to fail him is his hearing. Otherwise, Gilbert seems as stout and sound as the truck he drives.
"If I knew any place more isolated, I'd move," says Gilbert, half-jokingly. "You don't get much more out in the sticks than this. And the longer you're here, the more you like it."
I ask him why he's remained loyal to Paradox for so long, and he hesitates in response. However, an otherwise-quiet Dot chimes in, "Maybe because I won't leave. If you tried to take me away from here, I'd jump out of the car or run out the back door." She grins at this. Her eyes are lively. She means every word.
If Dot is clear on one thing, it is her fidelity to place. Alzheimer's is wreaking havoc on her sense of identity, home and belonging. Some days she asks for her mother, now dead for 30 years. Other days she forgets who Gilbert is. But she is clear on Paradox. Perhaps she remembers because time seems to have forgotten this place.
Gilbert is hard-pressed to describe how Paradox has changed in the decades since his arrival. He cites the appearance of electricity and paved roads, increased traffic and some new faces.
"It'd suit me if things around here would just stay the way it's been," he says. "The roads, water and electricity has helped it, but I'd just as soon it'd stay the way it has for the past 40 years."
Such a story seems to be the exception rather than the rule in the West. Most towns have become unrecognizable to their native sons and daughters. I wonder what a 75-year resident of Moab, Telluride or Santa Fe might say about the changing face of his home. I wonder how it is that Paradox has remained a moment frozen in time in a region otherwise hurtling towards an unknowable future. How has Paradox stepped outside the margins of a shape-shifting West?

On a chill, fall morning, the schoolhouse is abuzz with activity. Forty children from Paradox and Bedrock - preschool through eighth grade - pour into the building like eager honeybees. They congregate to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Then they divide up into classrooms for a morning of singing, stretching, artwork and lessons.
This is a charter school. The school district closed the elementary school in 1990 after the most recent uranium bust left the population too small to support a school. This was devastating for the morale and literacy rates in the community. Children endured three-hour bus rides for class. The central, beating heart of the valley was gone. Thus, in 1999, a coalition of concerned parents and citizens led the charge to start their own school. For all appearances, it's a success.
I sit in on a class of seven students. They learn about angles as the teacher's dog snores in the corner and Mozart plays softly in the background. For one who grew up in classrooms of 30 students or more, the individual attention these kids receive is astounding. The smell of cooking rice permeates the room. Ms. Thomas makes the kids a morning snack each day, often using fresh vegetables from her garden.
Judy Pentz, a fifth-through-eighth-grade teacher who has lived in Paradox for seven years, invites me to lunch in the cafeteria: taco salad, cookies and milk. I marvel at how the kids intermingle. There is no dividing up by age or status. Teachers eat with the kids and monitor their food intake. Again, in Paradox, I feel like I've stepped back in time.
"I keep thinking it's time to leave, but I'm not done with this place yet," muses Pentz as she eats her lunch of bread and peanut butter. "I think a lot of people come here to escape, but they end up finding themselves instead."
I wonder if Pentz is speaking of her own experience and what she may have found here. And I wonder about the students chatting eagerly around me, those born into this place. What future awaits them? Will they, too, find themselves here? Or will they forsake the fidelity their parents have shown to this place to find a sense of self and home elsewhere?
What is the half-life of belonging?

The Paradox Valley's ebb and flow through the decades has largely been set to the fickle tide table of uranium exploration. Though ranching has always provided the economic foundation and core identity of Paradox and its neighbor, Bedrock, uranium has defined their fate.
Despite a century-old pattern of boom and bust, some in the Paradox Valley still pin their hopes on the transformative power of uranium. They believe that the element will revive the community. Their hopes are now fueled by the promise of a uranium mill in the valley. The Montrose County Commission recently gave a unanimous stamp of approval for the project. Construction is slated to begin in 2011. This will be the first new uranium mill permitted in the country in 25 years.
The issue is controversial, and a bright media spotlight shines on this otherwise quiet community. Some residents are passionately in favor of the mill. Others are vehemently opposed. The newspapers have played up the conflict, though the reality on the ground is far less contentious. The community has not been torn apart by this ("There are more connecting elements than separating elements here," says Pentz), but people have their opinions.
Julie Schneider's parents live in Paradox, and she's been a sometimes-resident for the past five years. She loves the valley but has a more detached perspective than the old-timers. She is opposed to the mill.
"Some people here, they remember the boom times when they were able to afford that new pickup or something, and that's the best that they know how to dream for," she says as we drive the dirt roads separating the valley's ranches. "People here sometimes don't seem to have much ambition. They want their children to have work here so they can stay close to home. But you'd think they'd want their kids to do something better than work in a uranium mill."
She continues, "Mining and poverty always go hand-in-hand. Have you ever seen a wealthy mining town?"
Opponents of the mill bring up issues of radioactive waste, cancer, contamination of soil, water and air, the health of land and people. However, in listening to Julie speak, I wonder if the greater affliction has already settled upon the valley. What if supporting the mill is not the cause of the disease but a symptom? Despite the valley's idyllic, simple, frozen-in-time nature, it is no utopia. Residents, for all their kindnesses, appear to have lost the ability to hope for something more than the confines of the valley allow.
What is the future of all the bright minds I encountered at the schoolhouse? Will their teachers instruct them on how to dream?
"A lot of these people don't have very big dreams," says Julie. "No one told them that they were going to amount to much, and now they're telling that to their kids. In that sense, teachers are the most critical aspect of giving kids hope and vision and dreams in this community, showing them that there's a whole other world out there, and nothing's holding them back."
As vast as this valley is, I am reminded that the world beyond its walls is even more vast. Will Paradox's children look beyond the uranium mill to see this?

Gilbert Eades and I stand in Paradox's cemetery. We've come here to look at Slim Hecox's grave and enjoy the warm autumn air. Dot sits in the cab of the truck. After a pause in conversation, Gilbert brings up Dot's Alzheimer's, and his clear-seeing eyes are clouded by sorrow. One of their children has returned home to help care for her. Lynda Ayers checks in several times a week. Despite all this, she may have to go to a home soon. She doesn't even remember who he is sometimes.
I can't imagine the magnitude of such heartache. Gilbert is facing the loss of his beloved - slowly, cruelly. Unlike the disappearance of those lying below our feet, Dot remains physically present even as her mind, her heart, her essence drift through her husband's fingertips. Her face is a daily reminder of 70 years of life shared, but in her blank expression, there is no recollection of it.
Gilbert then shows me the plot he purchased years ago where he and Dot will eventually be laid to rest. But for now, this man holds 75 years of Paradox history within his sharp mind. Dot carries 86 years of this place inside her being. With the eventual passing of these links to a distant past, where will the valley's history find a home? What will keep the stories of a wilder West alive?
Lynda Ayers is another receptacle of Paradox history - a time machine, of sorts. She tells stories of a frontier childhood - riding horses to school, of no phone or electricity, of not learning what an ice cream cone was until her teens, of treating whooping cough with kerosene and sugar - tales that seem utterly foreign to me. Yet, when she speaks about the people of Paradox, I hold faith that the community fabric is strong enough to carry its patchwork of stories forward . . . even as it adds new ones.
"We've got a tremendous community here with tremendous people," she says. "I think we'll always have a close community. If I need something, all I have to do is say the word, and someone will come in and help."
Emotion surfaces as she recalls the group of teenage boys that visited after her husband's passing simply to deliver cookies and hugs. "It about did me in," she says with a smile.
Hearing this, I have faith in the future of the Paradox Valley. Maybe the vastness of a community's heart more than makes up for the simplicity of its dreams.

JEN JACKSON is a contributing editor of Inside/Outside Southwest magazine.