Written by Edward Duke Richey in 2006 the paper provides insights into post war development of Aspen.

Introduction:

Aspen offers a case study of the American obsession with denying and evading the presence of social class. Based primarily on personal letters, memoirs, oral histories, and newspaper clippings, this dissertation looks at the ways in which Aspenites argued over and shaped the meaning of their town from 1945 to 197 5. In chapters that examine why people came to Aspen, their work, their housing, their play, and also why many Aspenites eventually left, I question how the projecting and masking of social class evolved in Aspen and why that matters in the broader story of change in postwar America. Newcomer Aspenites shaped the town as an escape from the middle class. They often masked their intentions by presenting themselves as small town westerners, as pioneers on a frontier of freedom and fun with a clear sense of who belonged in their town. While Aspen itself changed as it grew, particularly by the 1960s when technological advances made skiing easier and safer just as condominiums made it possible for an increasing number of absentee owners to obtain properties in town, Aspen’s chief demographic trait continued to be that it was populated largely by the transient young, mostly privileged. In this respect, Aspen the ski town-or an offspring community such as Telluride, the ski town-was no different than Aspen, the mining town, or Telluride in its mining heyday.