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Ewing Mesa

Katz purchase ushers in a new and hopeful chapter in a lengthy saga

The announcement last week that Marc Katz has bought Ewing Mesa opened a new and exciting chapter in what has been a long and convoluted part of Durango’s history. That Katz says he intends to set the property aside for recreation and public use is admirable and, to the extent he succeeds, wonderful.

There is precedent for that. One would hardly have imagined such an outcome, however, from following the story of Ewing Mesa.

In the 1850s, wealthy New Yorkers had the idea to carve out a park from land that was then far from the working-class neighborhoods of lower Manhattan. And for decades, Central Park remained a playground for the rich. But the city grew up around it, and, today, it is visited and used by millions for all sorts of recreational and public purposes. And as wealthy as New York City may be, it would not be able to create Central Park today.

Katz’s motivation is not grounded in elitism, and it will not take a century or more for Durango to appreciate the good he is doing. But it is easy to imagine that, as this area grows, what he is calling Durango Mesa Park could be become central to life in Durango, both physically and culturally. (A 2003 Herald story described Ewing Mesa as three miles south of Durango. Look around now.)

Not that it will be easy or immediate. As Katz himself said, “Developing the property for these uses will take time, cooperation and hard work to realize.”

It will also take focus. Katz is likely to be hit from all sides with every wish list imaginable and every idea that can remotely be described as recreation. History backs that up.

Ewing Mesa, east of Highway 3 and about 300 feet higher, was named for its longtime owner W. (for William) Dudley Ewing. Born in Texas in 1890, Ewing and his wife lived in New Mexico and around Southwest Colorado until moving to Durango in 1923. He was a builder, on the board of directors at First National Bank and founded and ran Federal Lumber, which was on land now occupied by Albertsons and the DoubleTree. His Herald obituary said that, at the time of his death in 1968, he had “large real estate holdings in Durango.”

Over the years, countless plans have been proposed for the property. The Ewing family embraced none of them, however, and sold the mesa to Oak Ridge Energy of Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1990. And in the 25 years since then, its owners – the late Noel Pautsky and his daughter Sandra – have been approached with or put forward any number of schemes for developing Ewing Mesa, despite the fact that no one has come up with the money to develop the requisite infrastructure.

There was an effort to move the fairgrounds to Ewing Mesa. At other times there, was going to be a golf course, a regional park, perhaps a reservoir and always houses – lots of houses. Some plans called for 4,000 houses or more. Enthusiasm for developing Ewing Mesa was at one point so great that a public “visioning” session essentially suggested putting all new development there. The advantage was that not only were there no neighbors to object, whatever built there would not be visible from the rest of town.

For growth, Ewing Mesa became a tabula rasa, a blank slate onto which everyone could project their own visions and desires. And there is no reason to think recreation will be different. Katz has his work cut out for him.



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