-As The Washington Post continues
our journey across America,
reporting on the impacts of coronavirus,
the insight and perspective from people, towns,
and states is the story of uncertainty, struggle, and hope.
In southwestern Colorado,
cattle drives are a normal part of life.
What isn't normal is a global pandemic
reaching the tips of the Rocky Mountains.
-Over the last six to eight weeks,
truly it's been quite an adventure and an experience.
-The town of Telluride sits in a box canyon.
Steep forested mountains and cliffs surround it.
Waterfalls flow all around as snow-topped mountains rise high.
When the virus shut down Colorado on mid-March,
officials in San Miguel County worked with a private company
owned by two of their residents to offer antibody tests
to every person in the county.
They were the first in the nation
to test almost an entire county in the fight against the virus.
-We took some time and developed a plan to safely do that.
To actually do a blood draw on possibly up to 8,200 people
throughout a county that has a lot of different densities
to it was quite the undertaking.
We ended up deciding on two testing sites.
-The scenic and former mining town of Telluride
draws hundreds of thousands of visitors
from all over the world each year.
The population is older than average,
the nearest intensive care unit nearly 70 miles away,
and the high altitude makes any respiratory issue
even more complicated.
-To have an opportunity to test and really bring the community
together was fantastic.
I think people saw this and recognized
a very unique situation, and it's really surprising.
Out of our 8,000-ish residents,
we had over 5,500 people show up.
-But several weeks passed without results.
The holdup was the processing lab that was located
just 50 miles east of Manhattan on Long Island.
When the results came back, there was good news.
-The rates were very low,
and we will continue to kind of track in the future.
So there's a lot of unknowns still.
We don't know if it's gonna behave like normal viruses do,
that you may have immunity once you develop IgG antibodies.
-Soon after, the health of the residents
wasn't the only concern in Telluride.
-About 70% of our regional workforce
and the workforce of the county revolves around the tourism
and economies generated by the ski area.
-The economic implications in a resort town
are as perilous as the ski trails above.
Lodging, dining, retail,
and other businesses rely on a steady flow of visitors.
-My biggest fear is that, you know,
to whatever extent we experience loss,
financially or otherwise, that we're all gonna feel it.
-There's no secret as to why people around the US
and the world flock to Telluride for vacations and second homes.
I mean, just take a look at the scenery here
and that tells it all.
City officials also tell us that many of the festivals
in the summer that bring in so much money are canceled.
In fact, they're gonna lose over $22 million in revenue.
Another thing they're worried about is ski season
and exactly how that's going to go.
-We will have a ski season.
The question is what will it look like?
Do we let visitors in in June?
Do we let visitors in in July?
Do we let visitors in in August?
We've gone all the way to October,
and if that's the case,
you're looking at taxes that would be cut in half or more.
So, a couple of towns that run on $6 million
annually will have $3 million.
-As Colorado slowly begins the process of reopening,
the damage has already been done for so many business owners.
Michael Martelon understands that this
is only the beginning of the many months
and potential years of economic damage.
-But we've been on an upward trajectory for a decade now,
so yeah, people will not have seen this time.
This will be the first time that they're gonna see
the kind of failures that are going to happen.
They're just going to happen, and what we need to do
is hold onto as much as we possibly can.
-Legend has it that the name Telluride stems from the saying
"To Hell you ride,"
a warning about the treacherous mountain journey miners
embarked upon to reach the remote town.
But today, another journey awaits.
-We're in a very long haul of a recovery
and have business practices starting to move forward,
but there's so many different facets with that
'cause financial stability, mental health,
economic pieces, those all interplay,
so how do you come together and move forward in a mindful
and measured way to have all the complexities addressed?