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This is where reality hits the pavement (or dirt). Let's skip the sky is the limit talk and get
down to business. The pay dirt is discussed further down. If you want a conventional highly regulated
job, Grand County, Colorado does have a number of government jobs. With 76% of Grand County
being government lands, and (20% ranches), 20% of the people gainfully employed here work for the
National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, various Colorado State
agencies or local levels of government (including the schools). Each of these agencies will claim it has
limited funds and no openings, yet every year we see new faces in each of these places.
Most jobs in the county are filled by word of mouth using old fashioned small town bonding.
To get established, you might have to start with the help wanted ads in our local newspaper.
It is published once a week on Thursdays. For a subscription, write to the Sky Hi News at P.O.
Box 408, Granby, CO 80446; the cost is $22.00 per year for out of the area subscribers.
Subscribe now and you'll be prepared to settle here.
Write and visit the businesses which interest you which are listed in our delightfully small
yellow pages. Ask our Mountain Lake Properties staff to send you a US West Phone Directory
for Grand County. If you have a good memory, you can start memorizing the few hundred names
listed for Grand Lake! Call us at 970-627-3103 (direct from Denver/Boulder: 296-1949) for a
phone book.
A guaranteed way to get started is by taking over an existing business! This technique is used
by the by the smallest investors, the very rich and everyone in between! Check our commercial
property listings and let us inform you of other businesses which might be available
The real adventure involves you creating your own job. There is no best time to start, so why not
start now? But don't burn your bridges. Get a regular job for now or keep what you have. It will
help you pay for groceries, make friends and get financing later.
The secret is that it is just now becoming possible in Grand County to do many of the tasks and
industries which people take for granted in urban areas. Although we still have cowboys, ranchers
and hunters (and need more), entirely new jobs (and light industry) are being made possible through
our recent improvements in utilities, technology and even roads. A local Internet connection for
Grand County has been available only since the last week of June, 1996. Take advantage of it and
get a jump start on your competition. For details on our local internet provider, visit http://rkymtnhi.com,
that's Rocky Mountain High!
Just last year, many of our phones were on party lines which made electronic communication impossible.
A few years ago we had four digit dialing and pay phones were 10 cents! Cellular phones were introduced
to the county in 1995. Natural gas lines have just recently been added to the Grand Lake area. Our regional
sewer system (which is designed to protect our lakes) is still relatively new. The main road to Grand County,
Highway 40 over Berthoud Pass, has received millions upon millions of dollars of improvements. Some of
this work was just completed during the summer and fall of 1996. Highway 40 between Granby and Hot
Sulphur Springs just got a major rebuild last summer, and last fall they repaved the road from Granby to
Grand Lake.
If you need to directly visit large institutions and companies in the Denver/Boulder area, they are almost all
within a two hour drive down scenic Highway 40 and Interstate 70. Winter Park, Fraser and Granby have
direct rail service via a remarkable 6.2 mile (10 kilometer) tunnel bored under the Continental Divide!
Airports in Granby and Kremmling serve small craft. The Winter Park/Fraser valley will soon have its
electrical power service increased via new transmission lines. When you arrive, the services you need
will be ready!
Everyone starting a business wants to be blessed with good timing. The recent improvements listed above
assure that if you invest in Grand County, your timing will be excellent. Year after year, decade after decade,
our local economy has enjoyed steady and moderate growth, not too much, and not too little. Sales tax revenue
for the Town of Grand Lake has been growing at a fast clip of almost 7% per year for the last 15 years.
At this rate our sales tax revenue almost doubles every 10 years!
If you don't have the next great idea, remember that our townspeople and visitors have the same needs
for basic services as people in suburbs and cities everywhere. These needs are not always being served.
People come and go.
Tourism is king here, and will always be so because our natural resources are immense and protected.
Many people in Grand County have tourism related jobs. In some areas there is too much competition,
in others, almost no service. You may find a niche in our fragmented tourism industry.
Click here for employment at the Winter Park/Mary Jane Ski areas. (Use your Back Button to return).
Here is a review of how you can work now towards being gainfully employed in Grand County.
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© Text & Structure of this site is Copyrighted 5/1/96.