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<br />arms. Remington hired 20,000 people and by 1943 employed 40 percent of <br />Denver's factory personnel (Dorsett, 1986). <br /> <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's, 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 /> <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 sti.ll more. By the early <br />1970's, there were over 21,000 military personnel in the Front Range area and <br />mili tary spending in the State was approaching $1. 3 billion annually for <br />defense related activiti~s (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 /> <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 /> <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; Coloratio's <br />clear skies and well-educated population attracted the National Center for <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 /> <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 <br /> <br />- 8 - <br />