By Lucy Richardson
Wildfires serve an important purpose in natural forestation cycles: clearing out invasive undergrowth, improving wildlife habitats and stimulating new growth for the natural ecosystem. Although they can have immensely negative effects on nearby communities, some of these natural growth cycles can be mirrored in the economic impacts left after the fire is contained.
Colorado Springs is no stranger to the tribulations of wildfires. In late June of 2012, the Waldo Canyon fire burned through 18,247 acres of homes, businesses and public lands just four miles northwest of the Springs’ downtown area. That forced 32,000 residents to evacuate from Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Woodland Park and surrounding areas.
The fire was declared 100% contained a couple of weeks later, on July 10. In that short period, two lives were lost, 347 homes were destroyed and more than $110 million in damages were estimated. This projection proved inaccurate when, a year later, the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association released an estimated $453.7 million total for local insurance claims.
Undoubtedly, the Waldo Canyon fire — then declared the most destructive in Colorado history — caused immediate negative impacts on residents and business owners through health issues, revenue decline and property damage. Unfortunately, the economic effects of the fire continued well into the typically lucrative tourist season in the Pikes Peak region.
This area has experienced a steady increase in tourism over the past two decades. The 2012 fire and its aftermath provide an apt case study of how wildfires stoke fear in potential tourists, leading to many trips being postponed or canceled in their wake.
The Colorado Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau had predicted that the 2012 tourist season, which typically reaches its peak between July and September, would be record-breaking for the region. The fires drastically changed this outlook.
On July 7, 2012, Jeremy P. Meyer of The Denver Post reported on the immediate consequences felt in Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs. The article notes that local institutions such as America’s Best Value Inn Villa Motel in Manitou Springs faced evacuations as the fires raged in the foothills north of the town, requiring refunds for guests. During the month after containment, the motel lost 80% of its reservations.
Major tourist attractions like Garden of the Gods were closed during the containment efforts, and attendance remained low thereafter — hovering around 30-40% of typical traffic numbers for that time. Roger Miller, then the chief operating officer for the Manitou Springs Economic Development Council, reported a nearly $2 million loss in revenue, layoffs of 74 employees and many reductions in hours for workers who remained on staff.
According to Longwoods International, a market research consultancy firm specializing in the tourism and travel industry, tax collections for lodging and vehicle rentals were down .45% at the end of 2012.
Although the summer of 2012 took a bleak turn for the local economy, relief funds and community organizations created a promise of regrowth.
The Colorado Enterprise Fund, a nonprofit lending institution based in Denver, offered tourist-dependent small businesses loans of up to $10,000 with a 0% interest rate in the first year and 12% interest after that. Additional relief loans were available through the Colorado Springs Business Alliance.
Small-business loans may have made local business owners feel more secure in their financial future but, with the fire’s impact on visitor numbers and revenue, hope was hard to find. Luckily, community members banded together to create nonprofit organizations such as Colorado Springs Together, which followed the city’s Recovery Resource Guide to remove rubble and rebuild homes. With community supports in place, more than 250 houses were built to replace the ones that burned. They were, on average, 13.8% larger than the original structures, according to a 2014 article in The Colorado Springs Gazette.
These rebuilding efforts bolstered the construction and development industries for some time. Federal and state emergency aid contributed to the stabilization of economic stressors resulting from the fire, as well.
Of the roughly $450 million of insurance claims, about $151 million was initially projected to re-enter the El Paso County economy throughout the first few years of reconstruction, according to Tom Zwirlein, an economist and director of the Southern Colorado Economic Forum. Zwirlein also predicted that these additional dollars would contribute to 760 net new jobs created, according to a report in the Cañon City Daily Record in November 2012.
“Rebuilding will generate about 436 net new jobs, $103 million in new income and $3.9 million in sales and use taxes for local governments over the next five years,” the article reads. It expands to say that refurbishment efforts will generate an additional 324 jobs, $47.7 million in income and $6.5 million in tax revenues.
Net job growth, supportive grants and community organization made the rebuilding efforts after the Waldo Canyon fire more promising than initially expected. For the success of these efforts to be sustained, though, the tourism sector needed to recover. Local business owners feared that the threat of additional fires and literal scorch marks left on Colorado Springs would dissuade out-of-state tourists from traveling to the region.
Thankfully, the beauty of Southern Colorado shone through the burned land.
By 2016, Colorado Springs was setting records for tourist traffic and spending in the region. This, after 12% growth to 23 million in visitor numbers and 14% growth to $2.25 billion in spending, as compared to tourism numbers reported by Longwoods International in 2015. Since the devastating fires, tourism has continued to be a mainstay in Colorado Springs’ economic development. In 2023, the Pikes Peak region saw 24.8 million visitors and $2.9 billion in visitor spending.
The past 13 years have brought increased awareness and preparation for fire events to El Paso County. Though the risk of wildfires can never be dismissed, this work brings hope for continued growth in the region’s tourism and development sectors without the same extreme setbacks caused by fire devastation.
