Colorado report 2 - Natives vs Transplants

I had a couple of interesting conversations with Coloradoans when I was out there this past weekend. A quick preface: there is a bar within a block of Coors Field that is a Packer bar and is owned by a Milwaukee native called Swanky's. This became a Brewers bar over the weekend.

Anyway, a Rockies fan was in there and was ranting about how he hated all these people moving to Colorado and not adopting their sports teams. He saw me nodding in disagreement. I told him as much. I tried to explain to him the hold that a person's home teams and hometown have on them. He moved around a lot growing up, so he admitted he didn't quite get it. But, he gave my sister and me credit for actually traveling to Denver.

The next night, I was talking to a woman about the guy I talked to the previous night back at the same bar. She was trying to tell me how nice Coloradoans are generally. I brought up the other guy, then she told me that there is some sort of tension between Colorado natives and transplants (of which there are many). She was engaged to a Wisconsin native who moved out there. She was right about Coloradoans, they were generally very cool.

Another interesting thing I saw was a bumper sticker that looks like a Colorado license plate. It said something to the effect of:

"Not a native, but I got here as soon as I could."

The bottom line is that in the few days I was in Colorado, I noticed there is an interesting underlying tension between natives and transplants. There has been tremendous growth in Colorado, and almost all of it has happened on the Front Range. Colorado grew 30% between 1990 and 2000, and by 13% since 2000. Colorado has been a beneficiary (or victim) of internal migration, as shown in this table (PDF format). Many of the transplants have come from California (Californians are populating a lot of western states).

This many people moving into Colorado has strained the state's infrastructure, jammed their roads (I-25 has some impressive traffic jams), and packed their schools. This article (again, PDF format) talks about the growth in Colorado, although it makes erroneous conclusions as it is from an anti-growth group. You can understand why natives are a little upset. But, it was interesting to see people articulate this in a bar populated with Wisconsin transplants after a Brewers-Rockies ballgame.