Full disclosure: My wife and I lived in Colorado for 30 years. We loved Colorado and still do. Two of our children still live there. We have other family and friends there as well, scattered around the Denver area and its outlying bedroom communities. I still go down most years to Colorado in the fall to go out hunting with my long-time deer and elk-hunting partner and loyal sidekick Rat (Yes, we really call him that). We have a bull elk hunt tentatively planned for southern Colorado this year if we draw the requisite tags.
I moved to Colorado in 1989. I left active Army duty that year - the first time (long story) and I had no job, no place to live, so I was free to go anywhere I wanted. I love to hunt and fish, I love the outdoors, so Colorado seemed to make sense. Plus, I had an old Army buddy there who said I could crash at his place until I could find a job and a place for my dog and me to live. A year later, after another stint of active duty for Desert Storm, my wife - then my girlfriend - moved up from Kansas.
Back then, Colorado was more or less South Wyoming. Ranchers and miners still had a lot of influence in the state. But the rot was already setting in; as early as 1990, in my first job in the industry I would make a career, I remember people already complaining about the influx of people from places like California, and how they threatened to change what Colorado was.
And boy, howdy, has it ever changed. Colorado is now East California, with all of the lunacy that comes with it. Consider that the Colorado Legislature is, this year alone, passing some measures that would make Gavin Newsom stand up and applaud.
First, they have passed three of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. These laws may not pass constitutional challenges, especially now, in the post-Bruen world, but law-abiding Colorado gun owners are still harrassed by these laws until they can be challenged and overturned - which may require escalation to the Supreme Court, where the outcome is anything but certain.
Second, they are considering a law that "protects transgender rights" but, in fact, will punish parents for "deadnaming" their own children, among other things, a law that will weaponize custody cases across the state. What's more, that bill eases the way towards transitioning children, a notion overwhelmingly rejected by most Americans.
When a judge is hearing a child custody case, the court would have to consider deadnaming, misgendering or threatening to publish information related to an individual or child’s gender-affirming care as a form of “coercive control.” Deadnaming — when someone calls a transgender person by their previous name — and misgendering would also be defined as discriminatory acts in the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
Third, they are considering a Colorado version of Medi-Cal, only rather more so: A non-profit, single-payer health care system that will, as these things inevitably do, lead to providers fleeing the state and, in time, rationing of healthcare.
Colorado State-run Healthcare? DISASTER waiting to happen!
— FreeStateColorado (@FreeStateColor1) April 2, 2025
SB25-045 has quietly been working it's way through the State Legislature this year, and it just passed out of the House Finance Committee this week.
This bill helps lay the groundwork for "single-payer, nonprofit,… pic.twitter.com/bnM7OSOWKY
Meanwhile, Colorado State University is wasting time and money sponsoring a drag queen show.
Colorado State University is hosting and promoting an upcoming drag show. These are two of the drag queens attending the event.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 27, 2025
Your tax dollars fund this university. pic.twitter.com/LsmOpiRavv
Now, I can't be the only one who finds that disgusting.
See Also: Essex Files: Colorado Capitol Trump Portrait to Be Removed, Replaced With Better One
Biden-Appointed Federal Judge Considers Blocking Repatriation of Denver-Area Illegal Alien Activist
I still love Colorado and always will. When my wife and I moved to the Great Land, it wasn't because we were fleeing Colorado, although the state was already pretty far down this dark path by then. No, we both still love hunting and fishing, we love the outdoors, and we love our rural Susitna Valley lifestyle. We didn't move away from Colorado so much as we moved to Alaska. Colorado could have been as deep red as Wyoming, and we still would have moved north.
That doesn't mean we aren't sad about what's happening to the beautiful Centennial State. There's so much that's great about Colorado. We raised our family there, in a big, sprawling barn of a house in a suburb of Denver. Every summer, we camped and fished, and every fall, I hunted; our kids grew up eating elk, deer, antelope, grouse, and waterfowl. I still love tramping the woods of Grand County, where I hunted every year for decades. And Grand County, or at least much of it, is where you can still see the old Colorado; it's not at all unusual to see an old ranch hand with a revolver on his belt, even now.
Colorado has now gone nuts. The Denver-Boulder Axis now runs the state, having overpopulated the conservative Western Slope and eastern plains. The last Republican Governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, is in retirement. It's part of a larger trend - the sorting by migration that is dividing our country ever more into red and blue, and it's hard to see how that ends well. But end, it will, one way or another, and maybe once that happens, once we go through the hard times that make tough people again, Colorado will regain a little of what it was. I may not still be around to see it, but maybe my kids will.
