SILVERTON • Sallie Barney often finds herself daydreaming while riding the single chairlift of her town’s little ski area.

“It’s not hard to look around and be like, ‘Oohh, that would be fun,’” she says.

It is fun. She knows firsthand.

She has spent the better part of a decade exploring Kendall Mountain’s high reaches on skis: the steeps and back basin and glades closer to this modest base, complete with the lodge where some of the town’s estimated 663 year-round residents gather for Christmas.

Kendall has been a community staple since the 1960s. Above and beyond these four, family-friendly groomers, Barney has the powder to herself.

“That’s pretty special to me,” she says, “but I’m happy to share it. I want people to come and enjoy it.”

Many disagree with their mayor pro-tem.

Barney has been on one side of the latest argument to expand Kendall’s lift-served terrain from its 16 acres. By unlocking the mountain’s potential, she and others see an economic engine that Silverton hasn’t had since the last big mine closed in 1991.

Others, meanwhile, see an existential threat to their way of life here in this historic pocket of southwest Colorado, where there is no stoplight or corporate name in view. Where bullet holes and dirt roads remain from Wild West days and where some people make do with newspapers for insulation, where modern civilization seems far removed by hair-raising drives in either direction of town.

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The common story of western ski country is of development and market forces that push out one people, those of a rugged, blue-collar past, and welcome in another of high-class luxury. Silverton officials recognized this trend in a recent proposal.

“Other ski towns have experienced an identity crisis in the process of growth,” it reads. “Silverton’s values, its sense of character, and its identity should be strongly considered and preserved in all (Kendall) planning efforts.”

Critics see this aim as more ideal than realistic.

They ask: Wasn’t this the intent of Crested Butte, the so-called Last Great Ski Town, before today’s housing crisis and angst over the previously family-owned slopes selling to Vail Resorts? Silverton has proudly called itself the anti-Telluride. And skeptics wonder: Can this tiny town, located just 12 miles as the crow flies from those celebrity mansions and condos, really avoid the same fate?

“I wish they’d just let that go,” Susan Toms says. She moved 22 years ago to Silverton, what she knew as “one of the few small, quaint, Victorian mining towns left.”

She shakes her head. “If you ask anybody why they moved here, I don’t think you’re gonna get anybody saying they wanted a big ski area.”

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In a 2018 study, experts found “significant potential” for Kendall terrain reaching toward 13,000 feet. But big is not the idea.

In terms of politics, “I think Silverton is a bit of a reflection of what’s happening at a national level,” says Mayor Shane Fuhrman. “It’s been a challenge in how to engage the community in conversations around complicated topics in a way where all sides feel acknowledged and heard and where there isn’t this underlying feeling that someone has a hidden agenda or that everybody’s being duped.

“No matter how many times I say I love Silverton because it’s not a Telluride or an Aspen or a Crested Butte,” he says, “people don’t necessarily believe that.”

Lisa Branner is the town’s community relations manager steering the project. It’s been hard managing emotions, she says, hard with all of the fear and “negative focus” of media that has suddenly turned attention to Silverton.

“There are people with valid concerns,” Branner says.

“And their concerns are very aligned with the committee’s concerns,” Barney says.

The mayor pro-tem is one of these committee members exploring an expansion. They’ve released their “recommendations for consideration,” a broad outline of how things should play out now four years after concerned citizens packed Kendall’s lodge to first discuss the possibility.

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The recommendations call for a design “in the spirit of mountain people and mountain families.” It would be “rough-hewn in nature.” To be conserved are “view corridors, sunshine and quiet.”

And “(r)ather than a typical real estate-driven resort development,” the document reads, “we propose a model where the historic downtown district serves as a hub for services and amenities, the mountain experience is low-key and authentic, and the character of the community is preserved.” Kendall would be a year-round attraction, the thinking goes, with mountain bike trails and adjacent river recreation.

Leaders believe they have “a safeguard,” as Branner puts it. A way to “make sure things don’t go off the rails.”

That would be through the town’s continued ownership of the ski base. An operator would handle capital expenses and reap profits in a partnership “where there’d probably be some give and take,” Branner says. (A couple of suitors have expressed interest, including the company that owns Purgatory Resort in Durango, about a half-hour drive away in good weather.)

“If we actually do get into that planning process, and if we’re not meshing, we can totally walk away,” Branner says. “But we haven’t gotten to the point where we’re actually talking about the nuts and bolts of what this might look like. We’re not there yet.”

Though officials have pinpointed 800 acres as a preferred size, incorporating Bureau of Land Management property. That would compare with Monarch Mountain, the southern Colorado ski area with “ski independent” as its proud slogan, but different in how it stands alone on a mountain pass; Kendall’s chairlift is a matter of blocks from town hall.

The recommendations mention chairlifts as “a focal point for some.” But “it’s important to understand that the number of chair lifts does not determine if a ski area is considered large or small; it is the overall balance of resort facilities, infrastructure, and ski terrain.”

That acreage was blueprinted in one configuration by researchers in the 2018 study. For economic viability, they calculated 500 to 1,000 visitors needed daily, with closer to 2,000 during holidays. That’s potentially quadruple the town’s winter population.

Infrastructural concerns — limits on water, parking and medical care along with housing and lodging — have been noted by Silverton leadership. But the scenic train on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad has also been noted for delivering 1,000 people daily in the summer. And onlookers predict more of the unprecedented crowds that were in 2020.

“With or without a ski area, Silverton is vulnerable to change,” Barney says.

It’s been felt.

“Prices are going up,” says Mikey Loyer, a longtime local tending bar one recent night, “but there are no jobs.”

There have been more in recent years, thanks to Silverton growing its winter reputation as a backcountry base camp. Silverton Mountain’s heli-skiing outfit introduced a new era here, drawing an extreme clientele. Before that started in 2002, some remember no bars being open for Super Bowl Sunday.

Still, that big adventure is niche. Half of the town’s businesses appear closed in the snowy months, dark and boarded up. For sale and rent signs come and go across storefronts.

So there are enthusiastic supporters for some kind of Kendall expansion, something that would achieve a middle ground between the currently green ski area and the double black-diamond Silverton Mountain. Something that would provide variety, that would perhaps keep residents and visitors from opting for Durango. Something that might continue a trend of young, telecommuting professionals moving to town, seeing another amenity.

Silverton native Lois Jenkins isn’t so sure.

“I’m gonna have to say no comment,” she says at her restaurant, trying to make it in its first winter open. “A lot of our customers are the older locals that are not for it. So, you know, I’d hate to make anybody mad.”

Silverton, she says, has become “a place where you mind your Ps and Qs.” Talk of growth touches a nerve.

“I don’t really get mixed up in town politics,” says Pete Barz, husband of the school principal here. “People start hating you.”

The K-12 school annually counts between 60 and 70 students, and all ski free down the street at Kendall. On Fridays, it’s tradition families tailgate at “the beach.”

They grill and greet on this Friday. Everybody knows everybody. And some would rather not talk about this place potentially changing.

Barz is watching his kids race down the hill.

“None of us want this town to turn into something crazy,” he says. “One more chairlift. That’s all we need.”

He shrugs. “So there you go. Hopefully that’s your voice of reason.”