Jerry & Pam Race
By Martinique Davis

The photograph gracing the cover of this magazine’s inaugural edition is quintessential Telluride: Spindrift churns in delicate puffs from the snow-covered peaks at the end of the box canyon; homes bask in midday winter sun; and two cross-country skiers glide across the foreground in the untouched snow of the Valley Floor.

The year was 1983, and the skiers are Jerry and Pam Race. Pam, a schoolteacher, and Jerry, a pharmacist and Telluride mayor from 1979 to 1981, epitomize a breed of early pioneers who helped shape the funky-yet-forward-thinking community Telluride is known as today.

The image of the couple is one of the last pictures taken of them before they moved to Alaska that year. But when this community recently prevailed in preserving the Valley Floor for open space by raising $50 million last spring, the victory struck a chord for the Races, because it echoed the spirit of community-bred activism that they were a part of almost three decades before.

“As mayor, I always envisioned the Valley Floor as open space and hoped to preserve it as such at some point,” Jerry says, admitting that during his tenure he never could have imagined the depth of the legal and political battles that would eventually ensue. Back in the early 1970s, development of the Valley Floor was far from the drafting table. What was pulling at his heartstrings was that mine tailings were being dumped at the east end of the valley in what is now the Telluride Town Park.

Jerry came to Telluride in 1974 after ski buddy and college friend Fred Libby convinced him that it was the happening place to be. He quit his job in Alaska, got behind the wheel of his Volkswagen bus and embarked upon a colossal road trip. Soon after his arrival, he and Libby opened a mountaineering shop on main street called First Lead Mountaineering. “We didn’t make any money,” Jerry admits, “but we skied, climbed, kayaked and tried to work as little as possible.”

During winter, Jerry devoted much of his time to Nordic skiing. He was training for the Olympic cross-country ski team, and to help with his preparation, he would lay a ski track in the open area east of town (now Telluride Town Park.) Often the track would be destroyed by the dumping of mine tailings. Jerry was livid. A friend suggested that rather than just complain, he actually could do something about it: He should run for town council. “Politics had never been in my mind before,” Jerry admits, “but I started thinking about it and realized that I could get a lot of stuff done for skiing in Telluride.” He ran for council in the next election, not knowing that he would win by a landslide.

His first order of business was to create Telluride Town Park, where people could play ball in the summer and Nordic ski in the winter. Once the park was platted, an army of volunteers laid sod and got their hands dirty building the community site. The park was just the beginning. Next, Jerry and his council managed to compel mine operators to reduce the water and air pollution caused by the open tailings pond at the east end of town. The summertime festival calendar became a top priority, helping feed the town’s year-round economic engine. And they passed regulations that reduced dust pollution. Before he left politics, Jerry helped start the ball rolling for the preservation of Bear Creek.

Meanwhile, he and Pam had met, married (in 1977) and had two children. Pam had started the Telluride Public School’s special education program, and Jerry had sold First Lead and opened Sunshine Pharmacy with friend and fellow pharmacist Mark Watenpaugh (who runs the pharmacy today).

Yet after nearly a decade in Telluride, the Races were ready to move on. They returned to Jerry’s native Alaska in the summer of 1983 and settled in the the ski town of Alyeska. There, Jerry continued his profession as a pharmacist, and Pam taught and gave birth to two more children. They remained in Alaska with their family until 1999. “We led a much more quiet life, moving to Alaska and raising four kids—a lot more so than in Telluride, where the Sheridan Bar was Jerry’s second home,” Pam says, teasing her husband.

Today, the Races live in Mesa, Arizona, where Jerry is still a pharmacist, and Pam is a real estate agent. Their youngest child has left the nest recently, and the couple is readjusting to life without a gaggle of kids. Skiing is no longer the centerpiece of their outdoor activity; the spectacular mountain biking around their home in Mesa has taken its place.

With their newfound freedom, the Races look forward to returning to their old haunt sometime soon. Although a decade has passed since Jerry last visited Telluride, he isn’t concerned that he will return to a place unknown to him. “It’s like no time has passed at all,” he says of the town when he comes back and visits his old friends. “It’s like we never left. We all spent so many years there together, just having fun. It’s almost like an Indian tribe—you may be spread out, but you’re still all together. You’re still part of the tribe.”