May 2006
A PERSONAL LETTER

To: Susan J. Tweit

I read your piece on Christo and Jeanne Claude’s Over the River project in The Denver Post and was disappointed at the casualness with which you, a naturalist, can promote a new encroachment, albeit temporary and in the name of art, on the natural beauty of this portion of the Arkansas River canyon between Canon City and Salida, Colorado.

A Colorado native of 79 years, I worked for the Salida Daily Mail-Record from 1949 to 1952. I’ve driven Highway 50 up and down this canyon many times, and I always marveled at the breathtaking vistas that need no artificial enhancement.

Leave the canyon alone. Humankind has already done terrible things to it—all for “a good purpose.” Let rich people with big egos leave their footprint on the region in some other, less controversial fashion. I doubt that Salida would have had much of a library early on had it not been for Andrew Carnegie, and now a new, spacious art and history museum dedicated to the town by Christo and Jeanne Claude, bearing their names, would surely be welcomed, be of a more lasting intrinsic value, and attract tourists too.

If the Over the River project ever comes to a statewide vote, (and it may end up there, who knows?), I will vote no. Colorado has been entirely fair with this artistic team in its use of public property, having allowed the Valley Curtain project near Rifle. The principals have done their thing here, and need to move on.

You have my permission to forward a copy of this to High Country News, distributor of your columns, whose email address I could not find on its Web site.

Percy Conarroe
Longmont CO