The Mountain Is Growing Back. Bring the Cabin Plans

The Mountain Is Already Growing Itself Back

Most people who want a place in the Colorado mountains spend about twenty years wanting it. Somebody else always gets there first, and whatever’s left runs more than the house they’re already paying for. This one is different for an honest reason: the Spring Fire came through Forbes Park in 2018, and this pocket of it, nine thousand feet up in the Sangre de Cristos, is still busy growing back.

Picture the cabin on the high corner of the lot, aspen coming up around it, a wood stove earning its keep in January. Places on both sides of you have already been rebuilt, so you’re not the pioneer out here, just the next one in. The kids learn to read tracks in the snow, and you learn which neighbor owns the tractor.

Fort Garland sits half an hour down the mountain, and it’s a real old army post, put up in 1858, with Kit Carson commanding it for a year and a half starting in 1866. Blanca Peak stands on the skyline for most of that drive.

The plain version is this: you’re buying ground that burned. It also means light gets all the way down now, your sightlines are open, and aspen is about the fastest thing in these mountains to come back (it’s already at it).

Country like this doesn’t stay knocked down for long. The good part is you get to be here for the growing back.

• Build your mountain cabin behind the gate at 9,054 feet
• Wide open sightlines since the fire thinned out the timber
• Aspen coming back up through the burn, year by year
• Go fully off-grid here with solar, a well, and septic
• Dirt road frontage on two sides, with legal access in place
• No time limit to build, so you set the pace
• About 30 minutes to Fort Garland, an hour to Alamosa
• Walmart Supercenter and the real grocery run sit in Alamosa
• Gated subdivision keeps the road in to owners and their guests
• Adjoining 2.1 acres available separately, so take one or both