To many of us who know Granby, Colo., or
even mountain towns in general, the bizarre explosion last week
— a man armoring his bulldozer, mowing down buildings and
then shooting himself — was surprising. The explosion itself
was not.
Some people say they expect violence in cities
and not in little towns. But mountain towns have dark sides. The
question seems to be whether these towns attract people with the
potential for uncorking, or whether there’s something in the
towns themselves that can produce berserk behavior.
Granby managed to survive 99 years largely without incident. Named
after a railroad attorney, Granby Hillyer, it was bland enough that
with some regularity reporters for the Denver newspapers misspelled
it “Grandby.” It’s been described as a little ranch town, but
that description is as wrong as calling Denver a big ranch town.
Ranching hasn’t mattered in 50 years or so.
But
neither was it ever truly a tourist town. True, resorts are found
all around — Hot Sulphur Springs to the west, Winter Park ski
area to the south, and Rocky Mountain National Park and its
gateway, Grand Lake, to the north. But Granby itself was never more
than a place on the way to someplace else.
What Granby
has been for decades is a service center and bedroom for those who
sell scenery, snow and rubber tomahawks to tourists. It had a
blue-collar mentality that persists even to the present. That
mentality was reflected in a town vote during April. Town officials
proposed to borrow money to gussy up the streetscape, which looked
lifeless and dusty when the snow melted. There was the promise of
economic improvement: More than 6,000 acres of land were recently
annexed into Granby, which was expected to spur the building of
weekend and vacation homes for people of upper-middle and high
incomes. Still, town residents voted no, not until the money was in
hand.
The dispute at the core of Marvin Heemeyer’s
anger was also essentially blue-collar, if about zoning:
Heemeyer’s neighbor had been given the green light for an
industrial use, and Mr. Heemeyer objected, saying it harmed his
business, a muffler repair shop.
To fully understand what
happened in Granby, it’s probably necessary to examine Grand
Lake, 16 miles away, where Heemeyer lived. It’s a gateway to
Rocky Mountain National Park, snug in its isolation. A knotty-pine
sort of resort, it once had a large number of gay men and now
remains the snowmobile capital of Colorado. For about seven months,
drinking and snowmobiling seem to be the primary avocations.
For whatever reason, gateway communities for places of
peace and tranquility are themselves often anything but peaceful
and tranquil. Perhaps it’s the lack of seasons; in mountain
towns, there’s always too much winter. Then there’s the
isolation, causing moods to sour and grievances to mount. A
seemingly minor offense — a neighbor pushing his snow onto
your property, a car parked in the wrong place — becomes a
capital offense.
Whether Heemeyer succeeded in teaching
Granby a lesson — his intention, according to a suicide note
— is anybody’s guess. But now that the town has become
notorious, land developers will no longer have to tell people that
it’s 85 miles northwest of Denver, and reporters will know
how to spell its name.
And finally, once the hurt is
gone, Granby may yet be able to have some fun with its tragedy.
Think of a Dozer Days celebration, with the armored tank preserved
in the town park and a demolition derby at the rodeo grounds.
Cartoonist Kenny Be, in Denver’s alternative paper,
Westword, envisions bulldozer knickknacks, a
self-guided “Stations of the Cross” tour where people can follow
the bulldozer tracks, and town hall becoming the entrance to a
Disgruntled Loner Hall of Fame, with other possible rural honorees
being Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber.
Despite these
light-hearted musings, the damage to Granby was costly and
frightening, and one person died. Others might have been shot had
local emergency teams not worked so effectively. Undersheriff Glenn
Trainer was a local hero, riding the bulldozer like a bronc-buster
as he tried to figure out how to get a bullet inside the dragon.
There appear to be several heroes involved in this story, and they
probably will be part of town lore in years to come. As Winston
Churchill said, there is nothing quite so exhilarating as being
shot at without effect. Granby dodged a lot of bullets, and that
may be the story worth telling through the years.
Allen Best is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He lived in Granby from
1981-1985, and now monitors mountain towns in the West for his
syndicate, Mountain Town
News.
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