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•` of CasOe with them; they need to work with tts, like makes an the dam on Muddy Creek, a Colorado River e borrow- tributary, completed last year. We paid for There's most of the project but shared the water yield d who with the Western Slope." on." Eagle County commissioner Bud Gates. problem, whose Western Slope county turned down a with water deal with Colorado Springs and Den- utxess, ver's neighbor Aurora, agrees. "We have to conun- work towazd a win-win situa- to Front lion," he says. e already OON AFTER MOVING t0 Glen- hts are wood Springs, a mountain ;ht, sold, hamlet 160 miles west of Den- :rshave ver, I leazned it's a bad idea got here to drive to Denver on a Sun- 1 in 1862, day afternoon. That's when the eaz when people who spend the weekend ays I get in the mountains return to Front scan be Range cities, creating the Sunday argument afternoon clog. , ourmile There always was a clog, re- ~er killed members David Frazer, a veteran highway worker now a supervi- rt Col- sor, who has drilled, blasted, mpy patched holes, and plowed snow 'ow of as late as the Fourth of July on iant U.S. 40 and U.S. 6. Front One summer day in 1955 high- of the way engineers told him, "We're nets, a gonna fix it,"-with Interstate 70. e con- Beginning in 1961, the modern ~oir at conduit-with its interchanges, to River. overpasses, underpasses, fences, nge rest areas, and tunnels-snaked r Water through Denver and then worked df its ifs way through the incredible stern moentsin scenery to the west. The •nver highway pierced the Front Range er with crest in 1973 with the first of two God- bares of the Eisenhower/Johnson tunnel. 'astern I-70 seems too successful for its ten- own goad. Last year more than t Wal- nine million vehicles transited the mtil tunnel, more than a fourfold in- hat he crease since its opening. State ofFi- later vials consider widening I-70 here and adding another tunnel bore; they cringe at the cost - ~f hos- azound one billion dollars. of the Frazer is amused. "It's the same as it was ed to in the 'SOs. It's like trying to force six inches art bat- of water through cone-inch pipe." ork TrafFic weary, I flee to the backcountry for a traverse of Fed Cone, a stark and wind- swept peck whose formidable terrain attracts four-wheel-drive cnchusiasts from all over the country. "If you've never driven off a cliff, Red Cone will be a ne«- experience," advises Larn• IIeck, an Auroran who writes about four-wheeling in Colorado. He classifies Red Cone as VDL, which stands for "vehicle damage likely." Trucking water to the family cistern is a daily chore for Manouch Afshar of Braley Acres, where many wells have slowed or dried up since the late 1980s. Reliance on ground- water has drawn wellheads down by as much as 800 feet elsewhere in Douglas County. ~r 1996 ~ Colorado's Frone Range ~;