Basalt saw its median age rise from 38.8 to 46.2 between 2010 and 2022, as its population of adults over 65 tripled and overtook the under-18 age group. A population that is aging in place and newcomers from out of the area who are nearing retirement age help drive the trend.
Full-time residents are getting older in the Roaring Fork Valley, as in most of the United States, but the local economy and its challenges are highlighting this generational rebalancing. The midvalley area has seen the most dramatic demographic shift in recent years with the older-adult population growing faster and in some towns now outnumbering children.
“We’re seeing this [trend] across the entire country. We’re seeing this in Colorado where there is a faster growth in the over-65 compared to the under-18,” said Elizabeth Garner, Colorado state demographer at the Department of Local Affairs. “Even without the slowing in birth rates, we would have seen this faster growth in these 65-plus.”
Infrastructure changes in the second half of the 20th century, including the completion of the Interstate 70 and the Eisenhower Tunnel, made access to the valley easier and a wave of people in their 20s moved to Colorado mountain towns in the 1970s, Garner said. Those residents are now aging.
“We are still one of the youngest states in the country in terms of its share of the population over 65, but we’re also one of the fastest aging,” Garner said. “We’ve never really been older before.”
Although Basalt and Carbondale have long been seen as offering Aspen’s workforce an affordable place to live and raise a family, these towns are now seeing their 65-plus population outpace the under-18 population. Although this phenomenon is not unique to these two towns or to this valley, it illustrates how a nationwide and statewide demographic shift is playing out in rural mountain towns that are already struggling with housing shortages and a lack of affordability. Grassroots organizations are also lending a hand to help make the needs of older adults more visible and create a more inclusive, accessible community for all.
Alyce Perry, a four-year volunteer and recipient of Valley Meals and More, drops off a meal and has a conversation with Carolyn Jemison at the Crystal Meadows housing complex in Carbondale on Friday.
Now outnumbering children
Basalt and Carbondale both saw their 65-and-over population overtake the under-18 population as a larger demographic in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Basalt’s older-adult population increased by 339% between 2010 and 2022, while its under-18 population dropped by 26% and its under-5 population declined by 42%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Children in Carbondale in 2010 accounted for 28% of the town’s population, but they made up only 14% of the population in 2022. Meanwhile, the 65-plus share of the town’s population went from less than 9% in 2010 to about 19% in 2022.
The median age went up as well, increasing in Basalt from 38.8 in 2010 to 46.2 in 2022, while Carbondale’s rose from 34.4 to 42 during this time frame.
Basalt Town Manager Ryan Mahoney said this phenomenon could be explained by a population that’s aging in place, whether they’ve owned a home in Basalt for a long time and decided to stay, or they lived in Aspen and decided to stay in the valley, knowing they could sell their homes and move to Basalt. “[It’s] a bit of a warmer climate here and less elevation,” he said.
Mahoney added that Basalt has also been attracting people from out of the area, which he said may be an older demographic with more disposable income.
“It’s an attractive place for people to come for either a second home or to make this a retirement home,” he said.
Investing in infrastructure supporting mobility and pedestrian safety are high on the priority list in an aging community, while providing a benefit to all. A crosswalk along a busy section of Highway 133 near the Crystal Meadows housing complex is seen on Friday.
El Jebel is also seeing a similar pattern, as the under-18 population dropped by 29% between 2010 and 2022 and the 65-plus crowd tripled, but the older-adult population hasn’t outgrown the youth yet.
About 17% of Basalt’s population and 19% of El Jebel’s population were newcomers who arrived in these towns between 2018 and 2022, according to the 2022 ACS.
As for Glenwood Springs, its under-18 population keeps rising but at a slower pace than 65-plus.
The ACS estimates that Glenwood’s total population grew by 7%, the largest increase among the four towns, between 2010 and 2022, reaching 10,100 in 2022. The under-18 population increased by 27%, the under-5 population dropped by 24%, while the 65-plus population rose by 37%. The city’s median age stayed relatively stable, decreasing to 36.7 in 2022 from 37.8 in 2010.
A similar demographic shift happened in Aspen more than a decade ago. In the past 10 years, Aspen’s older-adult population has been consistently larger than its under-18 population — with the exception of 2021 when the overall city’s population dipped. That’s a reversal from 2000, when there were nearly twice as many Aspenites under the age of 18 as those older than 65. But in 2022, older adults accounted for 15% of the city’s population, while the minor population represented about 10%. Aspenites’ median age is lower than Basalt and Carbondale, but, at 41.3 in 2022, is below 2011’s record high of 47.4.
The under-18 population in Rifle, on the other hand, still outnumbers 65-plus, but it is increasing at a slower pace. The town saw its under-18 population grow by 8% between 2010 and 2022, representing 29% of its population in 2022. The number of older adults is also on the rise with a 73% increase during this timeframe, making up about 9% of the population in 2022.
Alyce Perry, who has been delivering for Valley Meals for four years, bikes around the Crystal Meadows housing complex in Carbondale, dropping off meals along her route. Perry also received a meal five days a week.
School enrollment in flux
Most schools of the Roaring Fork School District — Basalt through Glenwood Springs — have seen their enrollment numbers catch up after the pandemic-influenced years, from a total district enrollment of about 5,300 in the 2022-23 academic year to more than 5,840 in 2023-24. But the trend looks different in Basalt. According to the latest Colorado Department of Education pupil membership data, the Basalt elementary, middle and high schools recorded their lowest combined enrollment last academic year within 14 years of data, with a total of 1,341 students — lower than the enrollment of 1,375 in 2021-22, which at that point was their lowest enrollment since 2010.
Roaring Fork School District Superintendent Anna Cole sees affordability and housing as two main factors influencing enrollment trends. “We’re seeing, because of affordability, families moving towards Glenwood, moving towards West Glenwood, and looking at the movement of enrollment with kids similarly. That’s our hypothesis.”
As for Carbondale, the town has seen its population of children drop, but its schools haven’t seen the same decline.
All Carbondale public schools combined recorded 1,340 students in 2009-10. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the schools enrolled 1,385 students in 2019-2020. In 2020-21, this number dropped to 1,299, but since 2021-22, enrollment has gone up, reaching 1,473 in 2023-24, the highest total enrollment recorded since 2009.
“I always think that Carbondale is kind of like this center of educational choice,” Cole said. “[It’s] the diversity of choices within Carbondale.”
Those choices consist of eight different schools, including a public elementary and middle school, two public high schools, public charter K-8 Carbondale Community School, a public Ross Montessori pre-K-8 (although enrollment here is not counted in the data above), the private Waldorf on the Roaring Fork K-8 and the private high school Colorado Rocky Mountain School.
“[We have] folks who want to opt in to Carbondale Community School for this really small project-based learning experience, [which] pulls people from outside, beyond just Carbondale. [We have] parents who are interested in a public Montessori education who are excited to make the extra drive to Ross, and then I think we have folks that want to be in a more traditional super-diverse school and so are choosing to go to CRMS.”
Another reason schools in the district don’t always reflect their hometown’s population, Cole said, is that some parents prefer to enroll their children in schools located on their way to work, instead of where they actually live. “All of our schools see students from out of their enrollment area or out of our district, and I think that’s driven by commutes and by where work is in our community,” she said.
Glenwood Springs schools hit the 3,000-enrollment mark in 2023-24, the highest enrollment the schools have ever recorded.
Valley Meals program manager and Glenwood Springs coordinator Kate Bartleson reviews Friday’s route with volunteer Candace Goodwin in the City Market parking lot in Carbondale, which is the pickup location for volunteer drivers.
State demography office data shows that Garfield County’s net migration peaked at 843 in 2020, but slowed down to 81 in 2021 before the county starting seeing more people leaving than coming in 2022, with a negative net migration of 213. Meanwhile, Pitkin County has had a negative net migration every year since 2016 and recorded its lowest net migration in 2022 with a loss of 531 people. The two counties recorded 2,194 and 396 births between 2020 and 2022, respectively.
Garner said the sentiment that more people have moved to the Roaring Fork Valley during the pandemic isn’t substantiated by Census data, but it may be explained by an increase in visitors and more housing units being used for short-term rentals or as second homes creating a housing shortage.
“Colorado has never really had to compete for a young labor force, we would always have been able to attract people to the state, but now every state in the country is going through the same thing,” Garner said. “So the question is: How do we compete against lower-cost states?”
Mountain towns, in particular, are struggling to maintain a labor force as their older workers retire, Garner said. “We really have this huge growth in retirees, people retiring and those jobs need new people and typically those new people are going to be young,” she said. “And so making sure that we’ve got housing to take into account these retirees, let alone on top of that, new job growth is going to be critical.”
Carbondale offers a “center of educational choice,” noted Roaring Fork School District Superintendent Anna Cole, with eight different public and private schools. While the town’s population of children is down since 2010, its school enrollment has grown.
Older population, new challenges
Mary Kenyon, executive director of Valley Meals and More, said housing is one of the main issues that older adults are facing.
“It’s not so much that older adults don’t have housing, it’s that they’re in inappropriate housing,” Kenyon said. “So they grew up here, they raised their children here. So they’re in a four-bedroom home and there’s no place for them to go. They don’t want the two-level house anymore. They don’t want the sprawling ranch anymore, but there are no two-bedroom single-floor, no easily accessible homes.”
As of Sept. 11, senior housing complex Crystal Meadows in Carbondale has, for example, a five- to six-year waiting list of 93 people, according to the facility’s managing director, Jerilyn Nieslanik.
Valley Meals and More is a nonprofit organization that delivers meals four times a week to adults over the age of 60 around eastern Garfield County, from Glenwood Springs to El Jebel and Carbondale and up the Crystal River Valley (although they stop short Redstone). Fifty-nine percent of their clients are older than 75 and 58% of them live alone. Last year, they delivered 26,000 meals. “If you lived in downtown Glenwood, you could walk a block and get something to eat that’s prepared. But if you live 2 miles up the hill, you have no access.”
Friday’s meals await pickup from Valley Meals and More volunteer delivery drivers in the Carbondale City Market parking lot. Warming bags are used to ensure all meals are delivered warm and ready to eat.
Niki Delson, chair of the Carbondale Age-Friendly Community Initiative, agreed with Kenyon that housing poses a special challenge for older adults.
“I use ‘aging in community’ instead of ‘aging in place.’ I mean, ‘aging in place’ [is] for those who want to live in their homes, but I think one of the issues — and this is a trend nationally — is those of us who could afford to get into houses a long time ago, and have houses that are way too big,” Delson said, adding that a lot of people don’t have the capacity to downsize due to the lack of housing options.
The Carbondale Age-Friendly Community Initiative, which formed in 2019, belongs to AARP’s network of age-friendly communities. The group’s mission includes ensuring that the town’s older residents are visible and vocal in town planning and civic issues, and helping the town trustees to better assess and understand the needs of Carbondale’s aging population.
According to the September 2022 Community Assessment Survey of Older Adults, 78% of the 60-and-older population living in the state’s northwestern region (Garfield, Mesa, Moffat and Rio Blanco counties) live in single-family homes and 28% live alone. Twenty percent report not having enough food to eat, 43% report having some difficulty maintaining a healthy diet, 39% report feeling depressed and 34% report feeling lonely.
That same report for the region that includes Pitkin, Eagle, Summit, Grand, Jackson and Routt counties shows that 72% of the 60-and-older population live in a single-family home and 30% live alone. Ten percent report struggling to get enough food to eat, 30% report having difficulty maintaining a healthy diet, 30% report feeling depressed and 29% report feeling lonely.
Friday’s meal from Valley Meals and More is shown. Bananas also were provided as part of the meal.
The state demography office forecasts that the age 75-84 population in Garfield County will increase by 99.4% between 2022 and 2032 and the 85-plus population will grow by 86.7%. Slower growth is forecasted for other age groups. The state forecasts that the age 75-84 population in Pitkin County will increase by 23.7% between 2022 and 2032, but the 85-plus population is expected to grow by 127.5%. All other age groups in Pitkin County are projected to grow slightly or decrease.
Yet, state funding for senior services hasn’t increased since 2018. Colorado lawmakers last May passed Senate Bill 24-040 to review the adequacy of the appropriation for state funding for senior services every three years.
Kenyon said she has seen a trend of younger people trying to raise children in the valley who decide to move away due to lack of affordability and then cannot take care of their aging parents who remain here. Those older adults don’t always want to follow their children because they tend to prefer keeping their routine.
“I’ve seen people moving to be closer to children even though it broke their heart to have to leave the community, and then there are people who just become more isolated,” Delson said.
She also mentioned that although the valley has good medical services for a rural area, she knows a lot of people who have had to move to be closer to medical services or had to move because of the altitude.
They both insisted that the 65-and-older population is not a monolithic group, with needs varying from person to person and from one age group to another.
“A lot of our older, older adults, like our 85-and-older adults, are the homesteaders — these are people that have supported this community before the community even got here,” Kenyon said. “So they’ve always been quite self-sufficient, and so when they finally raise their hand for help, it’s beyond. It could be a more critical situation.”
But people who are older, especially early retirees, who have the time and desire to give back to the community are an untapped resource, Delson said.
The Carbondale Age-Friendly Community Initiative has been working, for example, at improving transportation in the town, installing benches on the Rio Grande Trail ARTway and working with the parks and recreation department on assessing accessibility in parks.
“I think when we think about this demographic change that it could be looked upon not as something that’s threatening the resources of the community but something that is a contribution to the community.”
Editor’s note: This story uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s five-year American Community Surveys (ACS). Each year that is cited ponders results from 60 months of survey data, which means that the five-year ACS for 2022 uses data from 2018-2022. This results in overlapping years between each of the 13 ACS surveys since. For example, the ACS for 2021 uses data from 2017-2021. Besides the decennial census that provides a population snapshot every 10 years, the five-year ACS is the only other data source from the Census Bureau that we can use due to the small population size of our towns and cities. One-year estimates are only available for geographic areas with a population of at least 65,000. See more here.
