(ambient music) (bright upbeat music) - This property was originally part of the mining community, and was originally slated from Idarado and was originally slated from Idarado to be a tailings deposit.

- I got a job from the old Telluride mines when I was 16.

They hired as kids 'cause they couldn't get anybody else to work in the mines.

There was over 600 guys that got drafted in World War II.

- They didn't use to have tailings ponds until sometime in the late '40s, early 50s, otherwise they'd just let it go down the river.

- The miners around the turn of the century were basically dumping the waste rock into the river that was the conveyance away from the mills.

Crushed rock that has other heavy metals and other byproducts from the leaching process such as arsenic and the soil is very nutrient-deprived, and so the plants that are able to grow have this chlorotic look to them.

- This was a mining community, it wasn't a community of conservation.

I can't help but think back of the miners when they came and all these outcrops of crystals, these giant crystal outcrops that were all around these mountains, beautiful.

And what did they do?

They managed to use those as sites to locate, to dig in and destroy.

So for those of us who love the land, the mining was an interesting proposition because it really tore this place up terribly.

(mines blasting) - The town itself was kind of a dusty museum piece - The town itself was kind of a dusty museum piece that had been set back on a shelf.

The mine was still operating and that really is what had kept the community going, moving ahead, it was the economy here until 1978 when they finally decided to stop mining operations.

- The mining was running down and the milling was running down and nobody could get a job if they graduated from high school and they all had to leave.

(dog barking) - It was almost a ghost town.

It was the crux between the old mining community that was fallen on hard times.

And then the ski area started, a lot of people started coming in from other areas.

- And some expatriates had moved down here, - And some expatriates had moved down here, they thought Aspen was getting too developed.

So we thought we'd come down and check it out.

And that was like I think that was the summer of 1970.

- I discovered Telluride in late summer of 1971.

I'd been on a camping trip moving around through different parts of Colorado that I hadn't really seen before, and like everybody, once you're in the valley you're taken with the place.

- Once you climb Keystone Hill and you've been traveling through the canyons for so long and you'd come up on this incredible vista of mountains, this blocks of canyon, it's pretty amazing.

So I ended up getting attached and staying.

- By some strange convergence, any number of sort of intelligent, sensitive, talented people began to find Telluride on their own.

(upbeat music) - [Art] They loved the place, but they also loved to party, they were fun.

It was an outlaws space, I mean, everybody got, did illegal drugs, it was fun, it was a lot of really interesting energy.

- We came into a mining community, they didn't want us.

They didn't like us, they didn't care for us, and it wasn't just because of sex, drugs and rock and roll, it was because we were different.

- Because there were some people who just, if you had long hair, they didn't want anything to do with you.

And other people were more receptive and you could build sort of one-on-one relationships with people, and there were a lot of nice folks here.

- I got acquainted with a lot of them, and hell, they weren't any different than the miners, human beings.

And I've made good friends with a lot of them.

And in fact if it is when we started to cutting ski trail, I had quite a few of them.

(bright music) - And there were no women, there were no women here.

- Women were more than welcome here, they were advertised for.

They said how many good-looking guys there were here, how well they would be treated.

- This is back when there were like five guys for every girl.

And it was wonderful because the women were all sort of empowered.

They're only strong women that came and we all got along great.

- There were more males than females in Telluride, but more women than men.

Got women running to responsibility and men running away from responsibility, it made for a very strange mix.

- My husband and son and I came here in 1975 from Southern California.

- I was in grad school in Albuquerque.

- Studied communications and economics, and I promised my parents that I was on my way back to the West Coast to work in a bank and get a real job.

- The last year I taught, there were actually 40 days that the air quality was so bad the kids couldn't go out to recess.

- My sister was skiing in Telluride with friends who lived here and she invited me to come skiing for the weekend so I did.

- I'm just gonna take a couple months to ski.

- And so we took off.

- And that was 35 years ago.

- That was 30 ski seasons ago.

- That's an old story that you'll hear from a number of people.

- We knew it was going to be a successful place.

We could tell, I mean, the location, the skiing, the whole deal, we knew it was going to be a hot item.

Again, those of us who thought a little bit about what these places could be began to realize that we needed to kind of get involved, and began trying to shape the way Telluride would develop.

- We were all here four or five years, and the town was really run by, as it should have been, by the people who were here before, the longstanding locals, and property owners and miners.

And it didn't really gradually shift, it took a major political movement with a rousing rally at the Opera House.

- We formed a coalition of people here to run for town council.

So we put together what was called a slate of candidates for all seven seats.

- And anybody that wanted to run and be part of the slate was welcome to come to the convention and run as a group.

We were speaking basic democracy, we were speaking getting back and rebuilding government of this country from the bottom up.

- And there was a resolve in there, and there was an excitement in there, and there was a commitment in there, and there was a bonding.

- We were successful when taking five of the seven seats on the town council.

That began a kind of a real shift in some of the direction that the town began to take, and try to protect and at the same time enhance what we felt like it was a really special place on the American landscape, and I think it remains so, I think we did a good job.

- There's a lot of reasons why the valley floor is important to this community.

For one thing, it's the gateway to our town.

And it sets a tone of our values of environmental protection, priorities of wildlife, clean air, clean water, and just a mellow vibe kind of thing.

It sets that it's not development, it's not sprawl.

And that was very, very important to this community, I believe it's still is.

- Slowly the town started to get more wealth, but as that happened, there was a real counterbalance of people who came here, the outlaw folks, the hippie folks, some of the trust funders, and they didn't want to see this develop in that normal fashion, the Aspen fashion.

And so there was a real push against any kind of development.

- The valley floor had been discussed for years long before I came here as one of the top open space acquisitions that the town highly valued.

The conversations were heating up.

- 1993, Town Council proposed a 20% solution, they called it, whereby 20% of all town revenues would be set aside for open space.

20% of all town revenues, that's property taxes, sales taxes, real estate transfer taxes, business license fees, everything, 20%.

- The mine closed in 1978.

So they sold the property and it came under the ownership of San Miguel Valley Corporation, which was headed by a man named Neal Blue, who has been making his money with industrial who has been making his money with industrial and military accoutrement of one kind or another.

- This was not a gentleman who hung out at the bars in town and dined here with his family, this was somebody who we knew as the developer of the Predator drone.

I mean, he wasn't a part of our community, we didn't know him.

(intense music) (printer grinding) - There was a story of a fax that came into the county offices, the drawings and renderings of their development plans, which included trophy homes and a golf course and ponds, and it was an upscale high-end community.

- But that fax was sent to Charlie Haas, president of San Miguel Valley Corp.

The county planner at the time was Charlie Knox.

And I am absolutely certain that whoever sent the fax said, "Here, send this to Charlie."

And the secretary or whoever just push the button, the Charlie.

- And it got to the wrong Charlie.

(laughs) - And this fax said that the company was gonna buy the newspaper.

- It talks about taking over the local newspaper and false news, creating false news, which has been in existence forever.

- They were gonna change the composition of the town.

They were gonna make it so their development would sail through and be able to develop this entire property.

- At the time, it was such an absurd and radical proposal.

The first reaction is, this is really a joke, April fool's day, it's really a joke.

And I think it really was the underpinning for other proposals that came later.

- The San Miguel Valley Corporation came up with several plans and presented them to the county planning commission, one of which we all referred to as Marina del Blue.

He had three lakes out on the valley floor, probably a couple hundred condos surrounding it, it literally looked like Marina del Rey.

- Telluride was sort of barely making it, it was a ski resort that wasn't really happening and people were not making much money, they were kind of hand-to-mouth.

So you would have thought in most places people would have welcomed this big investment, it was going to be huge.

And people were like, "No way in hell."

(laughs) - And it really got the people in this town up in arms, I would say, in opposition to what was going on.

- Virtually everyone in the community wanted the valley floor to be open space, people just didn't know how to do that.

Did that mean we had to compromise a little bit?

Would it be possible to just preserve the whole thing?

- [Presenter] Just following up on one of- - In the '90s, our council was ready to make a deal with the developer that would have resulted in as many as 1,000 units in this property.

The owner was unwilling to negotiate with us.

They tried to dissuade us, they tried to confuse us, but ultimately they had their own objectives, and unless we were going along with their objectives, they were not interested in negotiating.

- And then at some point the consciousness came to the community.

Like I say, I don't, it was fairly late on in the process when we said, "Why don't we see if we can buy it?"

- For many years, the town has set aside 20% of its annual budget toward open space, and so we had an income stream and a small pot of money and it kept growing and we kept offering it, but Mr. Blue didn't really need money.

- We were ordered into mediation.

And we found a retired judge that both parties, the landowner and the town, could agree on.

And we started having discussions, not face-to-face ever with the landowner, but through the judge.

As we were getting towards the end and we were not united, he was more forthcoming with the fact that this land owner is not at all interested in what you guys want to do here.

- They decided they would close off access to the valley floor for recreation.

We used to use the valley floor for recreation when SNBC owned it.

There were a Holstein cows out there, but we could Nordic ski, and we could ride our bikes, and we could walk and do all those things.

- Joan May decided we'd need some type of event to rally and to show the community, to see what kind of support there is for this.

- We held the rally for the valley.

We were hoping 50 people or something would show up and hold hands and walk out to the valley floor and state our solidarity for preservation.

- [Hilary] But as they were planning that, a lot of doubt came up in their minds of what if like 10 people show up to this thing?

We're going to look like a bunch of idiots and it could just compromise this whole thing.

- Lots and lots of people showed up, far more than we ever thought would.

- When 1500 people walked out there hand-in-hand to make a statement that this is important to us and we do things differently here, and we're going to step up.

- There was just a real feeling of celebration and unity.

Tellurides always had a bit of a challenge between feeling like close community and having strife.

And I think that rally really helped people feel like they were all part of the same thing.

- People who wanted to see the valley floor preserved decided that this company was not somebody to be trusted, not somebody to deal with, that we needed to do whatever it is we needed to make this happen, to take it on.

- And it's interesting because I started hearing the term right of eminent domain.

(ambient music) - Sounds horrible, eminent domain, it's mine.

And it's not an easy decision.

Corporate life and a greeting card company does not prepare you for eminent domain.

I went to Denver and I took classes on eminent domain and condemnation.

If you want to learn what condemnation actually means, what you're doing is not about that it's for you, it's about for this community.

- Condemnation, even though it has a really bad connotation around it, it really states that you have to pay whoever's land it was a fair amount of money.

It was up to us to convince the voters that we condemn the valley floor so it becomes public property.

- And then there were those who he felt like private property rights trump everything else.

And so I understand that point of view, I'm in real estate.

Private property, you can't just take someone's property, but there are instances where the public good outweighs that.

- After much discussion and much consternation, we decided as a council to put the question, should we condemn this property for open space to the voters?

- The town voted to condemn the valley floor.

- And that was just a huge, huge issue.

(intense music) (phone ringing) - The landowner approached sponsors in the Colorado legislature for a bill.

People referred to it as the Telluride amendment.

And it purported to say that home rule municipalities or any municipality in Colorado would be prohibited from using eminent domain to condemn land for open space, park, recreational purposes.

And the very day that it signed into law by the governor, and by the way, it passed the Colorado Senate by one vote, the landowner files its brief in court asking for the court to dismiss our condemnation petition.

And obviously you have to have a great amount of influence if you're going to be able to approach the Colorado legislature to approve and put into law a bill that's designed specifically to thwart a condemnation effort that you are on the receiving end of as the landowner.

So those are pretty powerful players that are able to put that type of mechanism in place.

(bright music) - There was a last minute attempt by the political types.

The mayor at the time did a mano a mano with the Blues brothers and came up with a solution.

- They announced that they were gonna come up with this compromise plan.

- The owners of the land approached town council and said, "Okay, okay, we get that you want open space.

So we have this proposal."

- They had a big meeting in the brand new Palm theater, pretty much the whole community at that point showed up.

- They did this big rollout of what this is going to be.

And of course the way they presented it, the developers presented it in a way that made it look like it was just the best thing that could ever happen to Telluride.

Only 10% is going to be developed, and the other 90 is going to be open space.

It's not going to cost you anything, just sign right here.

Town council was warm to the idea.

They liked the idea because people are going well, "This could be the best thing we ever get."

- The political types like myself were like, "Hey, it's a win-win."

When the Blues brothers offered 90% of the land free and no longer develop, and they get a little bit of development, just 10%, it seems like a good deal.

Because in politics, you compromise, that's the way politics works.

- A lot of the details weren't quite nailed down.

- The devils in the details.

And I'd served for my town council in Basalt, and I was going, "We're going to get screwed."

- I think a lot of it was a mistrust.

- This is another plan on the same thing, and, yes sir?

- Several times in your discussions you've made reference to the fact that this might happen or that might happen if the community wants it.

Could you clarify what the community is that you're trying to consider in those kinds of statements?

- [Presenter] I wish I knew.

One of the reasons this process- - We could probably help you with that.

(audience laughing) - And there's a general mistrust of government always, so it wasn't the people in the government, it was just the structure of the government.

And then also a mistrust of the developer.

He had shown his hand before, there had been many, many people before me that had tried to negotiate and all of those had fallen through.

And the same people who were fighting for condemnation and preservation were just having a harder and harder time.

They had been speaking to this issue for years, they were worn out.

More and more people who I expected to be on the side of preservation were getting up and kind of accepting this idea as it was being pitched.

- I'd rather see the things stay in private hands rather than the town of Telluride.

- We should maybe put a little housing on it.

- It's way too costly.

- I'm torn somewhat.

- We have a housing shortage, and schools that are bursting at the seams, and all these issues we need to address, we can deal with those, we're pretty capable.

And we can pretty much do anything we put our minds to if we come together and do it.

If we're divided, we're going to be arguing forever.

- We were kind of heartbroken because we thought, well, done, this is the best we're going to do and it's not good enough.

- Today's not a time to stand down.

- I was kind of an emotional wreck and I am sure there were tears shed.

In the end I did stand up, I continued to fight.

I think I said something to the effect of, we just can't do this, we've come so far, the land needs us to speak for it right now.

Who's representing the land?

They were claiming it as 90% open space, 10% development, many of us didn't see it that way, much of it was going to be private open space.

So it was essentially going to be a private development.

So we weren't going to have access to it, and that's a big connection from Telluride to the rest of the valley.

- You can look at your backyard and say it's 90% preserved, but it's not open space, it's your backyard, it's not the same thing.

- And having one hotel that's cut off from the public and having a pond that the private residents can use isn't preservation.

- Their idea of open space is golf courses.

A golf course in Arizona where you have your 15 large homes and the rest of it is open space.

It's manicured, planted all these invasive species, Kentucky bluegrass.

That to me isn't open space, that to me isn't protecting an ecosystem protecting a habitat.

- That was gonna go to a vote of the towns people, whether or not to accept this.

Because the valley floor was so important to everybody, the town council decided they didn't want to make the decision, they could have, but they decided not to.

(upbeat music) - Because they presented this alternative.

The issue then had people who are for and people who were against.

It threatened to tear the community apart.

- So the valley floor was always a contentious issue.

- I just remember it being very contentious.

- Very contentious.

- It seemed really messy.

It seemed like we were making it really difficult.

- It was difficult to hold conversations in public.

(ambient music) - It was a tough time for a lot of people in town because it was a divisive topic in the community.

I, like probably a lot of other people, was mixed about it.

On the one hand you have a parcel adjacent to the town of Telluride that's on sewer and it's on water, it's on a transportation corridor.

We knew we had housing needs locally, but simultaneous to that, you had this spectacular piece of land that was in a position to be protected and preserved in its entirety, which is really unique especially in this high Alpine setting.

Approximately 60% of the landscape is wetland area.

The spruce forest that occurs out here is very common in wetland communities and the wildlife thrive in locations like this.

Wetlands are used by about 50% of the species in Colorado.

- We needed to preserve the entire ecosystem in order to protect the river running through there, the wildlife habitat to allow for migration to happen between the public lands on either side, and to essentially offset the impact of Telluride.

- We are a forward-thinking, progressive, resource conscious community.

We want to be low carbon, we want to preserve and protect.

It's hard to say that we really do these things.

Every giant house built today, every house that's renovated to the tune of a couple million dollars uses enormous amounts of resources.

Every 20,000, 50,000 square foot house uses in an enormous amount of resources.

What have we done that is genuinely in favor of resource conservation, preserving the valley floor, and not building 17 multimillion dollar houses?

- A lot of people rallied to educate for the upcoming campaign, think that was the February 14th election.

And we did know that we needed to unify the community in order to get this done.

So we had some time to work on talking to people.

And there were all kinds of community events.

We had forums, and we had debates, and we had interviews and newspaper articles and history and everything was rolled out.

So we had an event at the Opera House and it was basically just a community forum.

Anybody that has questions, anybody who has answers.

Sheep Mountain Alliance helped to organize some other groups, it was just an ad hoc thing.

- People were saying, "Well, I think it's a good idea to go with this compromise."

And other people saying, "Oh, I don't think it is, we should try for better."

And Gary Hickok stood up, and he was not a member of the activist community at all.

And he said.

- I said, "One of these days you're gonna have some grandkids.

And 20, 30 years down the road, they're gonna come home for Christmas vacation.

They're going to bring their roommate, and they're going to come driving into the Telluride valley.

Your grandson's roommate is going to see this valley floor and go, 'How did that happen?

How is that possible that that property is open space?'

And your grandson's gonna say, 'Well, 20 years ago, a bunch of people got together and decided that they wanted to protect that valley and they purchased it.

And my grandpa supported that and worked with them, or, well, and my grandpa was opposed to that and he really wanted to see a bunch of houses out there.'

What do you want your grandson to say?"

- And he said, "Okay, Telluride folks, this is the valley floor that we're talking about, this is the ditch we need to die in.

We can't accept a compromise.

10% is not saving it, 10% development is 10% development and we have to fight for this."

And if there was one turning point of when I thought that this was actually possible to preserve the valley floor, it would have been that moment.

- There was a real dedication to the conservation energy and it was like the perfect time to have a vote.

- It was one of those pins and needles elections where it was time to step up and appear at the polls.

- The community turned out again.

- Put it to the vote of the Telluride citizens, and they said no way.

(laughs) - [Hilary] It was pretty consistently 62, 63% in favor of moving forward with condemnation, preservation of the whole thing.

- It was amazing.

I mean, what community turns down a deal like that?

- The town council said, "Okay, we heard you.

We thought this was a good deal, but we heard you and we're now gonna jump in.

We're all in 'cause this is what the community has directed us to do, and we work for you."

- So we all went into a different mode.

We all said, "Okay, we're all gonna redouble our efforts to make this work."

(bright music) - The election when our way now, what are we going to do?

And so a group of people started coming together from all sections of political bent in the community.

And I went to that meeting and- You have to be careful when you raise your hand, sometimes you end up with a big role.

- Valley Floor Preservation Partners was a partnership that was formed between the groups that had been working on this issue for a long time, we were very passionate, and the government.

- Once we initiated condemnation, the first thing you have to do is get an appraisal.

So we got an appraisal.

$24 million was the value that our appraiser said that we had the right to condemn, that had already been decided, it was just the valuation trial which was the scary thing.

But we thought we had a really solid appraisal that was completely couldn't be argued against.

- And then maybe a couple of million on top of that.

So maybe up to 30, but that's a stretch.

They won't go, we thought our appraisal was solid.

- That was before we knew that there were such things as alternative facts, and that facts don't matter and that sort of thing.

- And we knew we were back on the course of condemnation in a formal trial, and the award that we had to pay.

We had to come up with that award if we wanted to condemn the property.

The judge in this case was convinced that the landowner could not receive a fair trial in San Miguel County, and the judge moved what's called venue or the location of the trial to Delta.

- And the judge at the time was not friendly to our case.

And it got moved to the most conservative county in Colorado, the most property rights advocating county in Colorado.

So I remember that day when we heard that it got moved to Delta, and I thought that was a really bad card we drew, but we have such a solid case.

- It was this do or die moment for the town, whether you were going to succeed with the condemnation, the funding, the legal ability to go forward with the case in the first place, or if you were going to fail on those endeavors and then see the development occur with little to no input from the town going forward under the county regulations.

- We initiated a lawsuit.

They had the choice of having a jury trial or a judge trial, and they chose a jury trial.

- [Announcer] This is the KOTO Community Radio news for Friday, February 16th.

I'm Katie Klingsporn.

- [Cara] And I'm Cara Pallone.

- [Katie] In today's headlines, Virginia- - I want to say it was a Friday morning, 11 o'clock, I was listening to the radio at home and the mayor, John Pryor, came on the radio and said, "Okay, folks, we have the valuation, we just heard it."

And I was standing in my kitchen.

I heard the mayor say the valuation came in at 50 million.

- And the DJ was like, "Oh, 15 million?"

And he's like, "No, 50 million."

And even the DJ on the radio is like, (beep) "We're screwed."

- And I sunk onto the floor.

That was done, there's no way, can't do that.

- Your heart stopped.

It was, oh my God, we don't have a way to meet that number.

- Oh God, we can't do that.

I mean, 50 million, I don't even know how to write 50 million out.

Like how many zeroes is that exactly?

We spent about 20 minutes of tears and defeat.

David came over and he came into the room and he's like, "What are you guys sitting around for?

We gotta do this.

You can't just sit around.

We know what it is now, we gotta go, we gotta do this."

And he was the late comer, he was the young guy who had just moved to town.

- Using the word cheerleader, looking back on it, I fell like maybe that was my biggest role, I was just being a cheerleader.

Jane was the heart and the vision of it, and Hillary was the mechanism to execute a lot of it, and I was just the voice in the back of some people's heads.

- And he picked us up and we said, "All right, he's right.

We can't just give up at this point.

We probably not going to be able to pull this up, but we can't give up."

- We all knew he had no choice, but how we were going to do it took a few days to kind of collect ourselves and be able to dive in, it was heart-wrenching, it was really a tough number to face.

We ended up with 90 days.

It was scary.

We had a few pledges, but in the bank we didn't have very much at all.

(upbeat music) The word was out obviously immediately.

It was a headliner, $50 million in the paper.

So people knew, they knew the time was coming and it was time to really step up.

- We wrote about all of it, and it was really an exciting time because it was like a countdown and it was something that, it just didn't really seem plausible with the timeframe that they had.

- The consequence of not funding the award, I kind of call it the worst case scenario, you would be responsible for your own attorney fees which were about $2 million, attorney fees for the landowner, which were in the range of 2 million to $4 million, and then the land would be free for development under the county regulations.

And if you go back to that, the settlement proposal, where you could have had maybe 90% of the land preserved in perpetuity through the settlement, well, that would have been wiped away completely, that was no longer on the table.

It was going to be basically a lost cause.

- We had three months.

So we hired a professional fundraising organization to come in from Denver and do an analysis of the whole thing for us.

The fundraising team went out and they did their due diligence and they interviewed these folks in their very professional approach, they had a lot of experience.

And they came back and told us it can't be done, it's not gonna work out.

And so we wish you well, the best of luck really, but we can't engage on this cause we can only engage when we think there's a chance at success.

And we thought, oh gosh, what are we doing?

But at that point we were all in and we knew we had to do it and we all felt very passionate about it.

And so we just put that in a folder in the very back of a file cabinet somewhere and we did not tell anybody about the existence of that report.

We kind of had a small team and we put our heads down and we organized.

- None of us were experts and we tried everything.

- People were coming in off the streets every single day, and ideas were coming in left and right.

- Kids we're selling lemonade and cookies.

- We did fundraisers.

Different artists did art pieces that they sold for the valley floor.

We did silent auctions.

We had keg parties on main street.

- I went up and down main street, I went in every business I could and asked them if they would like to participate.

And we donated 100% of our sales from that day, which was about $20,000.

- It was going to be our 50th anniversary and we were saving to go to Machu Picchu, and we decided we'd rather have the valley floor, there was no comparison.

- So there was really that be creative, every dollar counts.

- We wanted their dollars to count.

And when Pamela Zoline and the Telluride Institute stepped up with the idea of the Wishing Well, that was one thing that was, in my mind it went, oh gosh, we need $50 million and a quarter at a time is not going to do it, where's our energy best spent?

- So it's like a four ton piece of art, and that was put on main street.

It was another one of those things where we thought, oh, this is a great idea and isn't that sweet?

And then it was part of this wave.

Families took ownership of it, we had their pictures.

Dogs would sponsor a week at the Wishing Well, and they had their on the Wishing Well.

- We went around and organized people working a day for free to put all their money into the Wishing Well to be matched.

- [Jane] Families would step up and go, "You can use my family's name.

We will match whatever goes in that Wishing Well this week up to $3,000, $5,000."

- And over a million bucks of people's coin collections and silver dollars and waitresses on their way home from work, putting a percentage to that, and we just rode the wave at that point.

I mean, some of it I felt like it was kind of out of our control, it just was meant to be.

- I think you can't think too big.

It's not enough just to do cake sales, you kinda need to go big time.

We oftentimes, and particularly myself as in government, we think in little discreet bits, but really you have to have a big dream, and this was a very big dream.

(soft music) - We wanted everybody to pitch into this, but we knew we'd have to ask for some big chunks of money from certain people.

We had another potential donor, Tom Shadyac.

- [Presenter] Welcome back to Mountain Film Telluride.

- Every year the crew here at Mountain Film gets to sit down with some of the most fascinating guests.

Now we're going to speak to big time Hollywood director, Tom Shadyac.

He's a very big supporter of the Film Festival, as well as the town of Telluride itself.

- People had stopped him in the street and asked him, 'cause he knows a lot of people in this community, and he was what I consider a part of the community and had been for a while, and he was a big part of the Mountain Film Festival.

- It's a ripple or butterfly effect.

- He just kept saying, "My heart's not in this, but I'm watching you.

I'm seeing what you guys are doing, and it's an important effort.

And I love Telluride, and keep checking in with me, but right now my heart is just not in this."

(bright music) - I think the Valley Floor Preservation Partners did two things that I think were key to helping their fundraising efforts.

They said to donors, "If we don't raise enough money, you'll get your money back.

And secondly, we will show you the conservation easement that is going to be placed on the property so that you'll know exactly what you're donating to and what's going to happen."

- So the conservation easement is the legal vehicle that ensures that the property is going to be protected going forward.

- You'll know that there's going to be no development.

The property cannot be subdivided, no structures built whatsoever other than bridges and or trails.

- You can't just put a conservation easement on your backyard, you have to have some compelling things about that property, some values, some functions that are worth conserving.

So 600+ acres in a high Alpine setting with rivers and wetlands and transitional forests and meadows offers a variety of conservation values.

These are benefits to wildlife, to fish, to water quality, as well as recreational opportunities.

- You know that hiking will be permitted, that cross-country skiing, that hang gliders will be able to land.

So those are the things that are going to be allowed.

- The conservation easement was a level of security for a number of people that they knew that this was in perpetuity, this was guaranteed.

(bird chirping) - It's interesting 'cause I had a fire and I lost my house.

I was on vacation and I came back and my house had burnt down.

For a while I said I was going to leave and I wasn't going to come back.

But there's this really strong hold of the mountains and the beauty, but that's only the start.

What keeps you in a place is not, it really isn't the place as much as the people.

If the people don't work for you, the place doesn't work for you.

The fact that we had a lot of counter-cultural people, people who didn't fit into the city, people who were fairly sharp, it wasn't about a hangout spot only.

We had people who cared about the intellectual world but were outdoors people.

And so they loved to ski, they loved to climb, they loved to bike.

(bird chirping) (soft music) You become a part of the place.

The place is no longer nature, you are the place.

You are connected deeply to it.

The people who came here not only loved the beauty of the place, but loved each other, loved the feeling of creating a new society.

I remember people thinking, talking about this, how could we survive if the whole world went to hell?

And this was a place of refuge, this was a place that people felt, if we're going to save one piece of this, let's say this piece.

- When we reached a level where we were just a few million dollars out, it was an enormous deal.

The newspapers were tremendous, the KOTO Radio.

There was huge interest, the Denver papers.

Here's the challenge and here's what's needs to occur.

We had signs on main street that gave a day by day.

- So there was something that was being updated every single day that showed progress.

How many days left and how much left to go.

So it wasn't the amount that we raised, but instead we put how much we had left to go, so the number was going down and people felt like that was attainable.

Other people who were more passionate than I have been part of this community for a long time, and they were getting desperate.

I mean, people were coming in and saying, "We have to, let's take out a loan, I'll take out a loan, I'll put my ranch up."

- Somebody took out a mortgage on their house to make a contribution, and I can't remember who that was.

- No, I wasn't one of those idiots who took out a second mortgage on my home.

It wasn't an idiotic move, it made complete sense to me when my friend Chris Myers came to me and said.

- I suppose I could probably take out a home equity loan and donate 25,000, would that be right?

And it was sort of before I knew it, I was committed.

And it felt so right, there was never second guessing that decision.

- Another girl who lived here in the neighborhood had a 16 year old son who just inherited her father's vehicle.

He just got his driver's license, and that was going to be a very cool thing, he had the family car.

It was his idea, I believe he told his mom, "I'd like to sell that car and give the money to the valley floor."

Amazing, just amazing stories.

- We basically had two fronts going on at that time.

One was, did we have the ability to raise the money in the first place?

And the other was, even if we did, they were going to mount a very vigorous defense as to our legal authority to condemn the land in the face of this law that they had passed that directly said you have no authority to condemn outside your boundaries for these purposes.

And I think in many ways that was probably purposeful that it was designed to cast doubt on the town's efforts to come up with the $50 million.

- We've got 2.07 million to go, and we've got a week left, we have to.

Now everybody has gone, people have reached so far into their pockets.

We can maybe scrape a little bit one out of this community, but we're pretty much at the end here, we've got to come up with this.

So we knew we had to go back to Tom Shadyac.

We either need to find out if he's in or not.

And I called our friend at the fundraising consulting company and I talked it through with her and I'm like, "Well, here's the message and here's the quote, and here's our marketing campaign."

And she's like, "Nah, throw all that out.

Why are you doing this?

Well, tell me your story, what motivates you?"

The web of life, being connected, and the value of the ecosystem out there and the need to speak for the land and why I personally was engaged, and she's like, "That's it, that's the story, you're gonna tell him."

And I thought, oh, he's gonna laugh.

And so we sat down in a room together with the mayor of Telluride, the mayor called him.

We said, "Here's where we're at, here's the deadline."

He said, "What do you need?"

And I said, "$2.077 million."

And he said, "All right, my heart's in it, I'll wire it."

And I got on the phone with him, gave him the information, and he wired it like within an hour.

And then we knew we had it.

- Never have I seen a community do something like this, put up that much money to keep land open and free, whoa.

- [Announcer] They arrived Thursday with a gathering in Elks Park on a sunny May sky, and an announcement from Mayor John Pryor.

- Fellow citizens of the Telluride region, second homeowners and guests, it gives me great pleasure to announce it, this historic fundraising efforts, both private and public to save the valley floor are at long last over.

(audience cheering) (bright music) - It was just one of those times and moments where you could literally just feel the positive energy and excitement and this kind of disbelief of overcoming what a lot of people thought was impossible.

- There were many, many steps along the way.

And I think without any one of those steps, the whole thing would have fallen apart, and each little piece mattered greatly.

- We pulled this off.

It was such a long shot and we did it, how amazing is this?

- I'm just still amazed.

I'm awestruck, it was the best thing we ever did.

- Over the years, as much as that ecstatic moment happened, I think people have just really grown to love the elk herds that now inhabit this place instead of the cow herds.

They've learned to love being able to walk on the valley floor, come film, or hike, all those things.

And we don't have to ask anyone's permission, we don't have to try to us sidestep around rules.

This is open for all of us, it's a park.

(ambient music) - I'm drawn to the valley floor primarily for the wildlife and the quiet spaces, and the sounds.

You go out and you just sit in some of those tree stands and listen to the birds.

(birds chirping) It's an escape, it's a wonderful, wonderful place.

Listen to the water, watch the water go over the rocks.

(water bubbling) That's kind of my secret use.

- I think the people's the number one change that I've seen.

The schools are using it for an outdoor laboratory living classroom.

- My children go out there and they have school projects on the valley floor.

They're learning directly from what they're witnessing and what they're interacting with.

- [Chris] Obviously the recreation out here is amazing from people just hiking and walking and enjoying the expanded trail network, to mountain biking, people using the river on standup paddleboards now, that's become pretty popular.

- I've been a fly fisherman all my life, and to now see trout being caught that haven't been seen caught on the valley floor ever.

- We saved this land for the land and for the wildlife, so that be for a while and see what happens.

Let the land heal from years and years of grazing and tailings deposits.

Let the land guide our use.

- The fact is this is how it's supposed to be, it should be preserved.

If you ride the gondola, you look down and you see that it's a big open space and that's an obvious view of it, but it's a sacred place for a lot of people.

- When I come off the valley floor, I'm talking to somebody that has never been here before, and they're saying, "God, you are so lucky.

How did you ever pull this off?"

- Every single time I'm out there I think about what the community went through, every single time.

If you don't participate, things don't occur.

You can affect change and it can be enormous.

(bright music) (upbeat music)