By Ilana Newman for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

One rural Colorado town is working to turn an irrigation ditch into a walking trail to connect the community, get people outside, and grow their recreation economy. 

In 2022, Monte Vista, Colorado received a Recreation Economies for Rural Communities (RERC) grant, which helped the city strategize to revitalize main streets and grow their outdoor recreation economy. What’s now known as the Lariat Ditch Project came out of the RERC planning process. 

The city of Monte Vista, population 4,070, sits in the middle of the San Luis Valley, a high elevation valley known for agriculture and access to some of the tallest mountains in the state. The region is known for their potato production, as well as growing barley, hay and alfalfa, according to their city manager, Gigi Dennis. 

Dennis saw developing the local economy through tourism and recreation as a way to support agriculture and get people to “think about Monte Vista in a different light.” She wants people to think of the city as an active, enjoyable place to visit and not just an agricultural community.

Local nonprofit organization San Luis Valley Great Outdoors (SLV GO!) applied for and received the RERC grant on the city of Monte Vista’s behalf in 2022 and has since been involved with creating the plan to develop more of a recreation economy in the area. Mick Daniel, executive director of SLV GO!, said they saw a lot of potential for Monte Vista to benefit from more planning around outdoor recreation. 

“We were sitting in the middle of like 8 million acres of public land….it kind of felt like there just wasn’t a lot of coordination between our public land managers, our communities, our recreationists,” Daniel said. The planning grant created an opportunity for all of those disparate groups to come together and create a cohesive strategy for the future of the city. 

RERC is a program in partnership with the EPAs Office of Community Revitalization, the Forest Service, the USDA, the Northern Border Regional Commission, the Appalachian Regional Commission, and the Denali Commission. 

It provides planning assistance for rural communities to grow their recreation economies. This can look like Main Street revitalization to support bringing visitors into the community, building infrastructure like trails, or creating community consensus on how to attract visitors and manage natural resources.

The Lariat Ditch Project takes a two mile stretch of open irrigation ditch that Daniel said is often filled with trash, pipes it, and places a trail on top. 

In conversations with the ditch company, Monte Vista city planner Dwayne Enderle said “they were more than happy to look at placing the ditch into a concrete culvert and placing the walkway on top”. Especially because, according to Daniel, the company was experiencing a huge loss in water due to “seeping through the walls of the ditch”. 

The trail would connect main street businesses in Monte Vista to their homes and other recreation opportunities around the area, including passing a half mile from the recently renovated Sky Hi Complex, a conference and event center that hosts Colorado’s oldest professional rodeo.

“What if we can connect this community to these valuable recreation resources? Maybe we don’t think about them as outdoor recreation, but a rodeo pretty much is outdoor rec,” said Daniel. The ditch also passes near downtown, the high school, the golf course, tennis courts, and through several neighborhoods.

The idea to build a trail along or on top of the ditch has been floating around the community for over a decade, Daniel said. But funding has, and continues to be, a challenge. The city of Monte Vista applied for a grant through the University of Colorado in 2024 to fund the project, but as of early January 2025, Dennis said that they have not yet been awarded any funding. 

“It’s a $12 million project, which is phenomenal for Monte Vista because my general fund tax base is only about four and a half million dollars…It will be hard to fulfill if we don’t get the grant funding.” Dennis said.

Building trails to connect communities to the outdoors is something that SLV GO! is doing around the region. The Lariat Ditch trail would become a part of the “Heart of the Valley”, a system of trails that will connect the communities of the San Luis Valley to each other and to the public land that surrounds the area. 

“You could potentially get on a bike or an e-bike and ride to the BLM or the Forest Service or ride over to dinner in Del Norte or lunch in Del Norte and maybe ride back,” said Daniel. 

While these trail systems might also add appeal to tourists visiting the towns, for Daniel, developing the region’s recreation economy looks mostly like appealing to locals, not visitors. 

Other towns in the valley, like South Fork, close to Wolf Creek Ski Area and located on the Rio Grande river, and Alamosa, the larger town closer to Great Sand Dunes National Park, see more tourism than Monte Vista. But Daniel knows that small business owners in Monte Vista would also love to see more visitors.

“I think by making it more livable for the people who live there, tourism will be a very pleasant side effect, not a bad side effect. The great thing about tourists is that they go home. They spend money, they go home,” he said.


Ilana Newman wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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Main Street businesses in South Dakota are playing what some describe as a "scramble game" in the fast-changing and challenging U.S. economy. As business owners keep an eye on new tariffs, they hope customers stay loyal.

Economists said the latest tariffs announced by President Donald Trump could lead to higher costs for products like electronics, clothing and food. Coffee is one of the popular items poised to become more expensive.

Deanna Muellenberg, who owns The Purple Pigeon Coffeehouse in Chamberlain, said she has not weighed all the details yet from last week's announcement but noted coffee prices for her have already increased by 40% since opening last year.

"I want to keep prices affordable for people that live in these small towns," Muellenberg explained. "But in order to be able to keep the doors open too, I might have to increase my costs."

So far, she has had to resort to a small price hike, with other popular sellers helping offset budget headaches tied to coffee supplies. The Federal Reserve Chair warned the new tariffs could lead to higher inflation again. Muellenberg recommended when locals do have a little extra to spend, they should keep small businesses in mind over corporate chains, because it benefits the town.

Nathan Sanderson, executive director of the South Dakota Retailers Association, acknowledged President Trump's argument about the need to "reset" the global trade market to establish fairness. But he does agree with other business voices an even bumpier road lies ahead.

Sanderson said with uncertainty almost a constant, policymakers need to set a tone emphasizing buying local.

"(Small) businesses are absolutely the heartbeat of rural communities," Sanderson stressed. "They are the entities that are supporting the local baseball team or the FFA chapter, or the dance troupe or what have you."

Outside of tariffs, Sanderson noted Main Street economies are seeing older business owners nearing retirement without enough younger generations to take over. According to federal data, South Dakota is home to nearly 90,000 small businesses.


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North Dakota has launched a new centralized online data hub and small-town mayors see it as an asset because information is power in trying to make their communities appealing to residents and future businesses.

The state's Information Technology department is out with a new platform it said will collect and disseminate reliable, up-to-date information from multiple sources, such as the Census Bureau. There are dashboards if you want to look up housing or workforce trends.

Michael Faught, mayor of Casselton, likes the idea of leaning on the tool when trying to boost development in his town of about 2,600 people. He said they need amenities to capitalize on population gains.

"There's a potential need for a new school, there's a potential need for a grocery store," Faught outlined. "With that growth comes growing pains."

Faught pointed out they have an economic development director but the town still faces limitations in retaining a robust staff to map things out. Like other cities, he noted when prospective businesses pay a visit, they need up-to-date details on local characteristics. For the most part, Casselton's population has climbed higher since the 2020 Census, putting pressure on the town to meet the needs of residents.

Kim Weis, chief data officer for the North Dakota Department of Information Technology, said a lot of the information is out there to find but it is often siloed. She agreed a central landing spot could remove barriers in seeking out community needs. She emphasized residents around the state might find it valuable, too.

"If they're looking to relocate in the state to be able to see, 'Hey, I'm interested in moving to this area, but boy, based off the data that's available, housing is pretty tricky there.' Or, 'They have workforce shortage issues in certain areas, so that'd be a great place for me to relocate,'" Weis pointed out.

Some dashboards on the platform have information which can be broken down at the county level. There are links to other sources allowing users to search for municipal characteristics. Weis added they plan to add more data and other bells and whistles moving forward.


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Virginians who work at low-wage jobs often don't have a workplace retirement plan so they can save money through payroll deductions.

A new study finds a similar gap between rural and urban workers, across the country.

The research by the Economic Innovation Group finds rural workers are less likely to have an employer-based retirement account compared to their urban counterparts.

Among high-income workers in both areas, the disparity narrows.

But overall, Sarah Eckhardt - a research associate with the Economic Innovation Group - said the gap between people in rural and urban settings who are offered a workplace retirement account is wide.

"Over half of full-time workers in rural areas do not have access to any kind of employer-based retirement plan," said Eckhardt. "This number is only 40% for people who live in urban areas. This is quite substantial and becomes even more salient when you look at the amount that people are actually able to save."

To help close the gap, Eckhardt's group is urging Congress to take up the Retirement Savings for Americans Act.

The bill would create retirement accounts for employees without one - and offer tax credits for lower-income workers as a matching contribution.

It has bipartisan support, but has sat in committee in Congress since 2023.

And it's about more than having a workplace retirement account. The disparity also includes how much people are able to save. The study found rural workers who do have a retirement plan have saved $55,000 less than their urban counterparts.

Eckhardt said the difference has real-world impacts on rural workers.

"Outside of retirement accounts, they tend to have fewer assets than people in urban places do, which means that they are less able to accumulate wealth and save for retirement," said Eckhardt. "Which could have consequences for how long they're in the labor force. Rural workers could be forced to work for more years than urban workers do, in order to make enough money to pay for their retirement years."

Eckhardt added that those gaps in retirement funds mean rural workers rely more heavily on Social Security -- and more frequently end up in poverty in their retirement years.



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