It's time to get out the figurative checkers and pickle barrel and feel the pulse of the town by working in ye olde antiques store in Florence, Colorado.
For those who don't know, Florence is the official antiques capital of Colorado and a burg of about 4,000 souls. We are off the beaten track, close to Highway 50, but not on it. We are accessible by Highways 67 and 115 and are over 20 miles from I-25. But people from all over the country and world, sometimes, manage to find the town. They don't come in droves usually, but at fast-enough clip to keep life and business interesting.
We moved here just a few years ago. We noticed real estate prices were way cheaper than Denver or Colorado Springs, where we owned homes. But that was to be expected since we are semi-isolated and the job market in Fremont County is decent, but nothing like the major metro areas along the Front Range.
We've had friends move here from a bigger Colorado city semi-recently and in helping them search online we noticed the real estate prices moving up. We could not figure out why though. There have been no new major employers in the county. The economy here is decent with the rebuilding of the Royal Gorge Park (about 20 miles from Florence) but the economy is not exactly robust in Florence. Decent, but not robust.
We have friends who know a top real estate agent who sells in El Paso and Fremont counties and the agent reported the inventory is low in Fremont County and prices are rising.
Why? There was even a minor newspaper story about it, quoting local real estate agents noticing this and an influx of people, but the agents couldn't nail down exactly why in order to establish a definitive pattern.
Well, all you have to do is hang out in ye olde antiques store to find out a reasonable theory.
A person came in the shop and knows a real estate agent who has been flooded with people moving in from a certain section of Colorado. I won't mention which section, since it's not my intent to give any area a bad rap.
I asked why people were flooding into Florence and buying houses when the job market here is what one would expect in a small town with few chain stores and very little industry except the prisons and small agricultural and related businesses.
The person replied that the area they are escaping from has went to pot--literally no pun intended. The illegal part of it. Illegal grows. And generally not from local people. The person said Cubans are often the ones bringing the illegal marijuana grows in.
I generally don't believe everything I hear. But this is the third time I have heard that. I heard it from an electrician. I had never thought of it before, but electricians and plumbers, etc. are generally all over, doing jobs and seeing what it happening in the real world.
And this area, folks are apparently escaping to Florence from, also has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the country.
And I know drugs (not marijuana only) are a problem in that Colorado town. I was in the town in question, actually buying antiques and saw it for myself. A friend had remembered from years back that she knew a neighborhood that had several antiques and junk stores all in a row. I was not familiar with the town much or the area. But we could only find one store that she vaguely remembered from years back.
I asked the store worker where all the other stores where, my friend remembered. She said that was years ago and the drugs were so bad that all the shop owners became scared and moved or went out of business.
I asked the obvious question: Where are the police?
"What police? There aren't enough police in this town," she replied.
As we left the store with our purchases, we were approached by a person who looked like a drug addict who insisted on helping us load our vehicle despite our saying, no thanks. He insisted and I gave him the few dollars I knew he wanted and so he would leave us alone, which he did.
Not a horrible experience, since the guy was respectful. But not a fun shopping experience that would draw most people to a town or neighborhood. And my and my friend are small town at heart, but perhaps are a bit more streetwise than some people since we've lived in some challenging areas all across the country.
I was told by the person who came into the shop I work in Florence, that people are coming in droves from this certain town, overtaken in part by drugs and also another town in Colorado that isn't quite as drug conflicted, but getting there.
At least now we know why real estate prices are rising in Florence and why we do run into so many transplants. And I understand. We all want small town America. We all want those conveniences and culture of the bigger cities, but we also want that small town security where we know our neighbors and can live relatively crime-free because the town is small enough so we can see what is going on.
Not that long ago, as we were moving here, and I was noticing the ridiculously low prices on nice homes in Fremont County, I asked our real estate agent why it was so. I was almost like a kid in a candy shop, finally able to afford a house I could never dream of in most other Colorado towns.
He told me that most people (usually employed by the prisons) chose to commute to Florence and Fremont County from larger towns, so there were plenty of houses available here. I asked why.
"They want the "lifestyle" in those larger towns and they don't want the lifestyle here," he said.
And now a few short years later, many people don't want the lifestyle in those same cities and are driving up the prices to get the lifestyle here.
