Ghost Town

Remember shale oil? Have you ever driven through Rifle, Colorado on your way to or from Grand Junction or Denver? Well, next time you do, take a look around you toward Battlement Mesa. When the bottom dropped out of the market, and Exxon moved out, they left a ghost town. However, it took some time and dedication to repurpose the city to provide value and meaning.

A lesson to be learned: Oil shale collapse preserved scenic vistas. A quote from the article... ...but at least the towns were not stuck with the bill. By requiring the oil companies to pay for the needed infrastructure (schools, roads, water systems), Colorado managed to avoid its historic role of being suckered by an exploitive industry, Lamm said. "We were not left holding the bag," Lamm said. "It's because the locally elected officials insisted that we were not going to put up the front-end money for oil shale." . An interesting thought about who should pay for what.

Moral: If you build without vision, you may be left with something with little value to you.