Pot growth wakes sleepy Dinosaur, Colorado — a small city that may very well be the state’s hashish capital

DINOSAUR, Colo. — There is not a lot to this city a brief drive from the nationwide monument of the identical identify. A few gasoline stations, a liquor retailer, and a small motel line the 2 essential drags, Brontosaurus Boulevard and Stegosaurus Freeway.

However this group of about 315 and its 4 marijuana dispensaries — one store for each 79 residents — is a contender for the title of hashish capital of Colorado.

Dinosaur, nestled within the northwestern nook of the state, is a five-minute drive to the Utah line and a few hours away from Wyoming, each states the place leisure marijuana use is prohibited.

Dinosaur lies on the intersection of U.S. Freeway 40 (that is Brontosaurus Boulevard) and Colorado Freeway 64 (Stegosaurus Freeway). The crossroads had lengthy been a cease the place truckers crammed their gas tanks and their bellies. However till weed got here to city, there was little to maintain the native financial system.

It is a traditional story of a border city prospering from differing legal guidelines state to state, and the way arbitrary strains drawn by a desolate panorama drive financial patterns. Coloradans from Dinosaur cross the border to get groceries and well being care. Utahans come to Dinosaur for lottery tickets, liquor, and pot.

The 4 hashish shops, which opened after the passage of a 2016 poll measure, have modified the fortunes of a city that made repeated shedding bets on different commodities earlier than lastly hitting the jackpot with marijuana.

“You would be shocked how a lot cash comes by right here,” mentioned Jim Evans, the city’s treasurer. “There’s cash operating out of our ears.”

Lando Blakley, who has lived in Dinosaur most of his life, opened the city’s third retail retailer, Dino Dispensary, in 2018. He estimates that 95% of his enterprise comes from out-of-state clients, some from as far-off as North Dakota.

“Proper now, hashish is Dinosaur’s lifeblood,” he mentioned.

Utah has legalized medical marijuana, however with tight restrictions and few locations to purchase it. So, sufferers could must journey hours to retailers in Salt Lake Metropolis or Ogden for an in-state provider. However for these dwelling in Vernal or different japanese cities, Dinosaur is the closest place to purchase hashish in particular person.

“If anybody needed to journey within the wintertime to go to a dispensary in Salt Lake Metropolis, they are not going to do it,” mentioned Michael, a 37-year-old who, like most pot-shop clients who spoke with KFF Well being Information, declined to present his final identify after shopping for marijuana at one of many shops. “Why drive 300 miles and put your life in danger, when you possibly can drive 30?”

It’s unlawful to convey marijuana over the border to Utah, however a number of clients mentioned they’ve by no means had an issue. Nonetheless, a site visitors cease for different causes might have extra critical penalties if police discover marijuana within the automobile.

Utah residents Jackson and Chelsea order their hashish on-line from Rocky Mountain Hashish, situated, appropriately, at 420 E. Brontosaurus Blvd. (420 is shorthand for smoking marijuana), and drive throughout the state line to choose it up.

“Everyone in Utah goes and will get their inexperienced card after which comes right here and will get their marijuana,” Jackson mentioned.

The playing cards, carried by individuals registered with Utah’s medical marijuana program (about 70,000 of the state’s 3.4 million residents), present cowl in case they get pulled over. Different clients say it is not well worth the trouble to use for a card and pay the $15 annual price when none of that’s required in Colorado.

A minimum of two different Colorado cities rival Dinosaur in per capita retail hashish retailers. Moffat in south-central Colorado boasts 4 marijuana shops in a city and surrounding space of simply 818 individuals, due to an enormous hashish growing operation.

Sedgwick is one other border city that has banked on weed, with three shops and a inhabitants of 172. The city sits within the northeastern nook of the state, lower than 10 minutes from Nebraska, the place marijuana is prohibited for each medical and leisure use.

Some border cities opted in opposition to permitting marijuana shops, corresponding to Rangely, from which residents now make the 18-mile journey to Dinosaur to purchase hashish.

The 4 shops in Dinosaur are bunched on the east facet of city, simply off Freeway 40, just about the one areas that fulfill the city mandate to be at the least 1,000 ft from a college. Most retailers need to be alongside the freeway, to seize clients passing by. Somebody might simply stroll to all 4 shops, and a few individuals just do that to dodge the state’s day by day 1-ounce buy restrict.

To say that hashish has reworked the looks of city could be a stretch. It stays a sleepy little city, with little else to drive its financial system. Regardless of the thriving marijuana commerce, there nonetheless appear to be extra closed companies than open ones.

In actual fact, the city is not fairly positive what to do with all the cash it collects. It as soon as limped together with an annual funds of $100,000 or much less, however Dinosaur now rakes in that a lot every month in hashish income alone.

In 2021, the city collected about $1.4 million in cannabis-related taxes and licensing charges.

When it first authorized hashish gross sales, the city collected a 5% tax that flowed into its basic income fund. Residents voted so as to add a second 5% tax earmarked for infrastructure tasks. It collects licensing charges from the retail shops and a marijuana develop operation and will get a portion of the hashish income collected by the state.

That cash has allowed the city to construct new sewage ponds, repaint the within of its water tank, and add new housing heaps with paved roads and sewer and water connections. The city is within the midst of a beautification mission, planting timber and flowers, and is refurbishing the previous college constructing right into a group recreation middle. The place the city beforehand relied on the county sheriff for legislation enforcement and suffered by lengthy response occasions, it has now employed three marshals of its personal.

And final yr, for the primary time in a long time, the city revived its annual pageant, now known as the Dinosaur Stone Age Stampede, with meals, video games, and music.

However many of the marijuana tax income goes into financial savings. The city expects to have about $3.5 million in its coffers by year-end, and, Evans mentioned, Dinosaur attracts some $230,000 a yr in curiosity alone.

Turning into a hashish sizzling spot wasn’t a given. Heated debate erupted when the City Council first thought of permitting retail shops. City leaders in the end determined to let the residents select on the polls. An preliminary poll measure in 2010 failed.

By 2016, opinions modified as residents noticed different border cities in Colorado flourishing whereas their city was rapidly turning into … properly, a dinosaur.

“Individuals have been seeing that the cities that had [legalized] was prospering,” mentioned Mayor Richard Blakley, 70, who’s the daddy of Dino Dispensary proprietor Lando Blakley. “And no actual dangerous crime enhance or stuff like that.”

The settlement that turned Dinosaur was initially known as Baxter Flats, however was established as a city in 1947, and named Artesia, a nod to the artesian wells within the surrounding hills. In 1966, the Nationwide Park Service advised native leaders in the event that they modified the identify to Dinosaur, the city would prosper from its connection to the nationwide monument recognized for its prehistoric fossils and petroglyphs.

Residents agreed and renamed their house and the streets. However prosperity by no means adopted, partially as a result of the Colorado facet of the nationwide monument has few dinosaur fossils. It is largely a showcase of geology.

“Individuals are available in and ask, ‘The place’s the museum? The place’s the skeletons?'” Evans mentioned. Apart from a couple of scientifically questionable dinosaur sculptures, there is no Tyrannosaurus rex or Stegosaurus, no Velociraptor or Allosaurus.

Because the nationwide park rangers say, Utah has the bones, Colorado has the stones — or, as individuals say on the Utah facet of the border, the stoned.

“We’ve a repute,” Evans mentioned. “You discuss Dinosaur in Utah, and it is like, ‘Yeah, they’re all potheads and stuff.'”

The mayor mentioned the city has seen few unfavorable penalties from permitting marijuana, amongst them some individuals unprepared for the drug’s efficiency being sickened by it. The city is rising. The inhabitants, which had dropped to 243 residents within the 2020 census, has rebounded to about 315, Blakley mentioned. Many individuals have additionally bought vacant heaps to reap the benefits of the comparatively low cost price of actual property, making it troublesome to search out land on the town.

Blakley hopes the financial development will convey a grocery retailer. Residents drive 40 minutes to Vernal, Utah, or two hours to Grand Junction, to refill on meals or to obtain medical care. Youngsters go to high school in Rangely since Dinosaur’s college closed years in the past. An pressing care clinic opened throughout from the city corridor a couple of years in the past, nevertheless it could not make a go of it.

Even when Dinosaur continues to develop, it will not add extra hashish shops. The City Council capped the accessible licenses at 4. And people 4 shops at the moment are the essence of Dinosaur.

“In any other case,” Evans, the treasurer, mentioned, “it is a unhappy little city.”

KFF Health News, previously referred to as Kaiser Well being Information (KHN), is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is likely one of the core working applications at KFF — the impartial supply for well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism.