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arms. Remington hired 20,000 people and by 1943 employed 40 percent of
<br />Denver's factory personnel (Dorsett, 1986).
<br />When the war ended, the federal government already owned so much land and
<br />had so much invested in Colorado it was economical to build a massive regional
<br />center here. In 1930, there were over 2000 federal civilian employees
<br />headquartered in Denver and serving in various government agencies. That
<br />number grew to 14,000 by the 1950'x, to 23,000 by the early 1960's, to over
<br />30,000 by the mid-1970's, and today there are estimated to be almost 55,000
<br />federal civilian workers in the State, working for almost 150 different
<br />agencies (Abbott, 1976; Dorsett, 1986; CB/EOF, 1986).
<br />Military spending also increased. The cold war induced the Air Defense
<br />Command to relocate its headquarters from New York to its present location
<br />near Colorado Springs. The Air Force Academy was authorized and built in
<br />Colorado Springs. Lowry Air Base was expanded still more. By the early
<br />1970's, there were over 21,000 military personnel in the Front Range area and
<br />military spending in the State was approaching $1.3 billion annually for
<br />defense related activities (Dorsett, 1986). Currently, Colorado
<br />ranks sixth in the nation in the amount of spending on the proposed Strategic
<br />Defense Initiative, gleaning almost $24 million annually from this single
<br />project (Foster, 1987).
<br />The, vast majority of these activities were confined to the Front Range
<br />corridor, although extractive and agricultural industries on the West Slope
<br />were also stimulated by the war effort and subsequent development of the
<br />defense industry in Colorado. For example, a $600,000 road-building project
<br />was undertaken in the Naturita and Uravan region to provide access the
<br />vanadium and molybdenum mines. And the boom in uranium mining in the early
<br />1950's created 5,000 jobs in the Gunnison-Uncompahgre region and brought
<br />relative prosperity to many small West Slope cities.
<br />Unfortunately, most of the prosperity west, of the Divide was short:-lived.
<br />Virtually all of the growth in the State since World War II has been along the
<br />Front Range. The 1950's and 1960's saw new companies, many associated with
<br />the new areospace industry, such as Ball Aerospace, Martin Marietta, and Beach
<br />Aircraft, mushroom along the Colorado Springs-Denver corridor: Colorado's
<br />clear skies and well-educated population attracted the National Center fox,
<br />Atmospheric Research and the National. Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
<br />These same amenities, combined with close access to recreational areas,
<br />attracted IBM, Johns-Manville, Sunstrand, Honeywell and a host of other
<br />engineering-technology companies (Dorsett, 1986). The State's population grew
<br />by 750,000 between 1940 and 1970, almost all of the newcomers settling in the
<br />urbanized Front Range (Abbott, 1976). Today, nearly 80 percent of the State's
<br />population lives within a narrow 120 mile-long strip from Colorado Springs to
<br />Fort Collins.
<br />Tourism also grew as an industry. In 1936, almost 1.4 million people
<br />came to Colorado as tourists and spent $80 million (Dorsett, 1986). The
<br />Denver Chamber of Commerce started an advertising campaign to promote Colorado
<br />as a "Year Round Playground". The incipient ski industry got a boost when a
<br />rope tow was installed on the south side of the summit of Berthoud Pass. A
<br />nearby area was formally christened "Winter Park" in 1938 and special "snow
<br />trains" brought visitors to the area from Denver (Dorsett, 1986). Other West
<br />Slope attractions were opened to tourists by the establishment of the Moffat
<br />Road, the railroad connection that placed Denver on a direct line to the
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