Breckenridge In The Fall

The weekend before last I drove up to Breckenridge from Denver just to hang out a bit in that lovely town, and it made for a perfect Sunday afternoon. There were lots of visitors on Main Street checking out the shops, and plenty of people on the outdoor patios in front of the restaurants that line the street. I suspect, like me, most of the visitors had driven up from the Denver metro area, since this is the off season right now. Between Labor Day and the start of the ski season, out of town visitors are few and far between. Last winter's hot, dry weather resulted in ski tourism in the Rocky Mountain West declining by 6 million visitors, and ski resorts are working on providing more resort offerings other than skiing to get them to come back, no matter what the ski conditions are. But everyone is still hoping that the 2026 El Nino will bring a lot more snow to the region this season.

The drought conditions here in Colorado are still pretty severe. I walked through Blue River Plaza, filled with gold-colored aspens, as seen in the photograph on the right, to the river itself, and found that it was completely dry. Not a good situation at all. In any case, the plaza was decorated for Halloween, and lots of people were hanging out there, sitting on the benches, enjoying the view of the mountains. This plaza, by the way, is the center of Breckenridge Oktoberfest every year, with a stage set up where they actually play traditional German music during the festival, as opposed to other Oktoberfests in the state, which seem to feature only rap music and hard rock. Perhaps that is a modern-day Germanic tradition. But if so, what a bummer.

Recently I read a USA Today article listing Lending Tree's top ten most expensive small towns in America. Number one was Nantucket, number two Vineyard Haven (on Martha's Vineyard), number three Jackson, Wyoming, and number four - you guessed it - Breckenridge. The median home value is $748,200 and almost half of those dwellings are seasonal residences. I remember my ex-wife's family once owned a condo in Breckenridge back in the 1970s and went skiing there every weekend during the season. And then there were several years in a row with very little snow, and they sold it. In hindsight, it was a mistake to sell, but on the other hand, it would have meant 50 years of HOA payments and upkeep before the value of that condo reached what it is today. I myself am not going to bother calculating which alternative would have been best. The moral of the story, Breckenridge homeowners, is not to sell based on a year or two of little snow. Mother Nature will always fool you. But as far as I am concerned, making the hour and a half drive up to Breckenridge from Denver whenever you want is a much cheaper alternative than actually owning a place there. Even if you do have the $748,000 to spare. And since we are now in "America's New Golden Age," who doesn't, right?