Cortez, CO: A Town Blossoms with No Trees on Main Street

We were sitting on worn leather benches at Gustavos, the best Mexican restaurant in Cortez, Colorado. Sonja Horoshko–artist, activist and journalist–was explaining why the Cortez city council was cutting down the trees along the sidewalks of the town’s two blocks of business district on Main Street.

“One tree caused stress on a building as the roots grew under the sidewalk, so the city cuts down all the trees on the block. But there has to be another solution besides cutting down the trees, right?” she said, nearly pleading, over dinner.

Later, while Sonja and my friend and Sonja’s partner, Ed Singer–artist and activist and onetime Navajo political figure–feasted with us on Gustavo’s great dishes, the conversation turned to the topic of a wind farm that had once been in development in Gray Mountain near Cameron on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.

About ten years ago, when Ed was president of the Cameron Chapter (governing body of his home community), he had gone into head-to-head battle with Joseph Kennedy II. A wind farm project approved by the community that had elected Ed Singer to lead them was well on its way to fruition. But then young Joe Kennedy, armed with a big check from which Ed’s people in Cameron would gain a pittance, landed in Window Rock (the Navajo Nation capital) to work a separate deal with the Navajo central government.

I’d read the articles that covered the ensuing scandal, which was ugly, and which revealed Kennedy as something of a spoiled brat. Kennedy, who’d played up to Joe Shirley (President of the Navajo Nation at the time),  flew to Cameron in his private plane. He fed the Cameron community helpings of stew and fry bread. Then, in the course of trying to convince the gathered audience that his Citizen’s Energy Corporation was better than the company they themselves had chosen to build their wind farm, Kennedy degenerated into chastising his listeners for questioning his good will.

That was back in 2008. The wind farm project was stymied by the dispute. As of now, there is still no wind farm in Gray Mountain.

Ed Singer moved to Cortez, where he now lives with Sonja and paints.

Bare and bleak on the surface, Cortez, gateway to Mesa Verde, hosts artists like Ed and Sonja, who gather in restaurants that serve great food suggesting that something delicious is happening behind closed doors of a town that can be missed in the blink of an eye. One restaurant, Once Upon a Sandwich, does double duty as Ed Singer’s gallery. The owner opened for us early so we could have a showing before we hit the road.

The works that sparkle from the restaurant walls are filled with humor, vibrancy and metaphor. Ed’s latest work, not yet shown, has turned a bit angrier in step with the mood in the country overall.

Ed and Sonja hosted us for Easter dinner, which was delightfully informal, with folks coming and going, a small, cheerful home filled to the brim with animated conversation and laughter. An archaeologist from Zuni Pueblo, a contractor and overall right hand to one and all from Princeton, New Jersey, Sonja and Ed, and all of us, had many tales to tell.

Main Street in Cortez may be losing its trees, but, weeks away from the start of tourist season, the pulse at its core is alive and well.