The day I first stepped off the plane in Colorado in the summer of 1992, I felt something shift inside me. It wasn’t the decrease in oxygen at altitude, or the color of the bluest blue sky I’d ever seen. It was a cellular shift—an understanding that somehow, someday, I needed to move my life to these mountains.
At the time, I was in college at Georgetown University, studying psychology and French, with no real plan for the future other than graduating with a GPA that would make my parents proud. I had lived in Washington, DC my entire life, and until that fateful trip to visit my brother, had thought I would live there forever.
After college, I was busy untangling myself from a destructive relationship, falling in love with my eventual husband, and rethinking my plan to become a French-speaking psychologist. As I redirected my path toward a medical career—also at Georgetown—I pushed my dreams of Colorado aside for the sake of education.
When I first brought my husband to Colorado, I nervously wondered if a Bronx-born lawyer would notice the same magic I felt in this little mountain town. Not only did he feel its charm, he rode every inch of dirt here on his mountain bike and started imagining what a life here could mean.
MOVING TO COLORADO
In 2001, we bought a piece of land with every penny we had and many pennies we had yet to earn. We called it an “investment property” to make ourselves feel safe, but we both knew it was actually an investment in our dream life together. As I finished my training in DC, we saved money and slowly—over the course of four years—started building our home under the watchful eye of a 13,000 foot peak called Mount Sopris.
We’ve been living here 18 years now, and I fall more deeply in love with Colorado with every passing day. It reminds me to respect our planet with even my smallest decisions. It nudges me to take care of my body with the siren songs of its endless trails. It calls me to connect with my thoughts and my inner quiet when I hear the river’s gentle roar.
In our 12th year as a Colorado business, I can think of no better way to celebrate being in Colorado than to give some love to other Colorado companies. My team and I put together this list of local companies; some are big, some are tiny, some are in our backyard, others a few miles over the mountains. I hope you enjoy getting to know them whether you live in Colorado or not, and be sure to put this state on your bucket list if you’ve never visited!!
Colorado Clothing Companies
Colorado Bicycle Companies
Colorado Home and Lifestyle Companies
If you have an afternoon free in Denver and need a place to wander with no plan, stop by this design collective. You might leave with a rug, a vintage skirt, or a refilled bottle of laundry detergent!
Delta Brick & Climate Co.
Delta Brick & Climate Company's vision is to use methane from retired coal mines to fire the sediment, creating bricks, and tiles. In essence, they’re solving an environmental problem (methane), an agricultural problem (sediment), and making your kitchen or bathroom look amazing!
Colorado Health and Wellness Companies
This is how all nail salons should feel—bright, clean, and healthy! They’ve expanded beyond Colorado now, and their website offers fabulous colors and a handful of their own skincare products as well.
Colorado Food & Drink Companies
Two Leaves and a Bud
Our favorite local tea company, just up the road in Aspen. Their plant-based tea bags are commercially compostable, and they have a huge variety of mostly organic tea.
Chocolove
Good chocolate is a nutritional supplement—almost. This Boulder-based company makes beautiful, socially and environmentally-responsible chocolate.
Big B's
If you don’t have time to head to the orchard and pick your own apples, these guys will do it for you. That said, if you DO have time to drive over to Hotchkiss, they have a cafe, cider tastings, and live music in the harvest season.
Combine a craft distillery with a modern mountain inn, and you’ll find yourself at the Marble Distillery in our little town. They have five modern rooms above the tasting room, and quick access to all Carbondale has to offer. Plus, look at their still—it is the stuff of my wildest dreams.
Whiskey, Colorado style. They have a great brand story that plays right into the cowboy that lives in all of us.
As a gluten-sensitive human, I don't drink much beer. But once in a great while, I crave one and now the only beer I drink is from Outer Range. One day, after a long, hard cross-country ski session, a friend handed me one of their Pastels hazy IPA beers, and it was one of the best things I've ever tasted. It's not always in stock, but I'm always on the lookout for it!
With love and buckets of Colorado Pride from us to you,
